War News for Friday, December 28, 2007

WWSB ABC7 news is reporting a new death not reported by CENTCOM. Sergeant Bryan Joseph Tutten died in Iraq on Tuesday, December 25th. No other details were reported.

KEGT news is reporting a new death not reported by CENTCOM. Sgt. Benjamin Portell was killed by small arms fire in Iraq on Wednesday, December 26th. No other details were reported.


Security incidents:

Baghdad:
#1: A car bomb detonated in the middle of a busy market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 64, police and hospital officials said. At least one woman and a child were killed in the blast, a police officer said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to the press. The popular market in Tayaran Square — a predominantly Shiite area that has been targeted by insurgents in the past — was full of shoppers heading home from Friday prayers

#2: U.S. forces killed five gunmen and detained 14 others during operations targeting al Qaeda in central and northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.

#3: Supreme judiciary council said its investigating committees set free scores of detainees held in Iraqi prisons. “The released detainees amounted to 11,621 detainees since imposing Baghdad’s security plan, dubbed as Fardh al-Qanoon, that started in mid February 2007,” a judiciary media source, who requested anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) on Thursday.

#4: One person was killed and another one was injured when a mortar shell hit a bus in eastern Baghdad, a source from the interior ministry said on Friday."A mortar shell hit a small bus at al-Mashtal intersection in eastern Baghdad, killing one person and injuring another one as well as causing severe material damage to the bus," the source, who requested anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq

#5: Around 5.30 p.m., an American squad defused a car bomb at Jamaa neighborhood (west Baghdad) .No casualties or damages recorded.

#6: Police found ( 3 ) unidentified dead bodies in the following neighborhoods in Baghdad: ( 2 ) were found in east Baghdad ( Risafa bank ) in Kasra neighborhood . While ( 1 ) was found in Bayaa in west Baghdad ( Karkh bank).


Diyala Prv:
Baquba:
#1: Gunmen disguised with the Iraqi army uniform attacked a house of Sunni family at Sadaa village ( 5 km north of Baquba ) .They killed two men and pushed the women out of the house. When left, women found out IEDs planted in the house .Army came and defused the IEDs .

#2: A roadside bomb exploded at Zighaniya ( 3 km north of Baquba ) killing one child and injuring another.

#3: A sniper shot a policeman dead at al-Mafraq in Baquba without any further information, police said.

Muqdadiyah:
#1: The U.S. military said it had killed four heavily armed gunmen tied to al-Qaida in Iraq in an operation Friday near Muqdadiyah in Diyala. Another was killed in a predominantly Sunni area south of Baghdad.


Kirkuk:
#1: Unknown gunmen on Friday kidnapped two civilians south of Kirkuk and took them to unknown place, a security source said.

#2: Unknown armed men opened fire on a group of citizens in Bashier village, south west of Kirkuk, killing one civilian," the source, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Mosul:
#1: The body of a man was found with gunshot wounds on Thursday in western Mosul 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.



Afghanistan:
#1: U.S.-led coalition troops killed several suspected Taliban insurgents inside a compound in southern Afghanistan, and detained nine other people, the coalition said in a statement Friday. While searching a compound in Qalat district of Zabul province on Thursday, "coalition forces were required to escalate force when militants demonstrated hostile intent, killing several militants," the statement said. A woman was also wounded during the operation, it said.


Casualty Reports:

Sgt. Greg Rayho, 30, an infantryman with the 3rd Stryker Brigade who led a team of four to five soldiers in Iraq, is a rare recipient of three Purple Hearts. Nearly three months after fulfilling his desire to return home with his men and the 3rd Stryker Brigade after their nearly 16-month deployment to Iraq, Rayho has spent a good deal of his leave undergoing surgery to repair teeth sheared from the bomb blast that delivered his first wound in October 2006. Another surgery is scheduled to remove the 7.62 mm bullet from an enemy AK-47 still lodged in his wrist from the second wound suffered, in May. The first was in October 2006 from Mosul. A bomb hung from a tree exploded as a Stryker vehicle, with Rayho standing in a hatch atop, drove underneath.
"I took the explosion mainly to my face and lost teeth. It was a huge concussion. The teeth were the first to go," he says. Rayho was wounded the second time in May near Sadr City, when his patrol was ambushed. A vehicle behind his was hit first, followed by a coordinated attack by snipers with improvised bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Rayho, in the hatch, dropped down with his battle buddy to reload. He recalls seeing his buddy's face spattered with blood, then feeling his right arm go numb and realizing the blood was his. X-rays revealed a large nerve in his wrist was damaged. He had no feeling in his pinky and ring finger and up his forearm. The final wound took him out of the fight in July in Rashid while he was conducting patrols to lock down battles between Shiite and Sunni insurgents. While he was pulling concertina wire off the back of their Stryker vehicle, a deeply buried 50-pound bomb went off. Rayho and his buddy were knocked out. The vehicle commander's leg was blown off. "The concussion broke ribs and shifted my internals," Rayho says.

Jerrod Hays, 38, was criticially injured during an explosion in Qasim, Iraq, when the vehicle he riding in was attacked by IED’s or improvised explosive devices. Since the attack on Feb. 22, Hays has been in and out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., receiving numerous surgeries to repair his eyes, face, hands, back, and legs. Doctors were unable to save the index finger on his left hand and two or more surgeries were needed to remove shrapnel from his body.

Bobby Joseph, 26-year-old Golden Gate resident and Marine veteran of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan had his life’s plans blown apart by the 200 pieces of shrapnel that ripped his body on Nov. 11, 2006, after a roadside bomb hit him while on foot patrol in Iraq’s Al Anbar province.