War News for Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Baghdad:
#1: Meanwhile, the U.S. military said troops killed 13 suspected insurgents and detained another 27 on Monday and Tuesday in operations targeting al-Qaida in Iraq in the central and northern parts of the country'


Diyala Prv:
Baquba:
#1: In a separate attack northeast of the capital, four people were killed in a suicide bombing targeting a funeral procession for two members of an anti-al-Qaida organization, officials said. In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated himself amid mourners at a funeral. At least four people were killed and 21 injured, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The funeral was being held for two members of an Awakening Council.

#2: Overnight in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, two members of the local Awakening Council were killed, allegedly by US military fire, police sources said.

#3: Militants blew up a police station, killing two policemen in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

#4: U.S. forces killed two gunmen and detained four others in operation near Baquba, the U.S. military said. At the funeral of the two men a suicide bomber killed 10 people and wounded five, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police put the death toll of the bombing at four killed and 21 wounded.

Muqdadiyah:
#1: In Muqdadiyah meanwhile another Awakening Council member was killed and two others wounded by unidentified militants.


Tikrit:
#1: Saboteurs blew up a power station in southern Tikrit, cutting off electricity in most parts of the city, according to local security sources. "Two huge blasts hit Tikrit's southern power station last night, resulting in a blackout in most parts of the city," a source from the city's joint coordination center, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The blasts destroyed all the transformers in the station which reduce the voltage from 400 to 130 volts to be used for home purposes," the source explained."Police forces defused another explosive device planted inside the station, which was timed to go off while security forces and civilians were at the scene," the source added.

#2: A car bomb exploded near Tikrit bridges in Tikrit city early morning. No casualties were reported.

Baiji:
#1: A suicide bomber exploded a pickup truck outside a residential complex belonging to a state-run oil company north of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 22 people and wounding at least 50, local officials said. The bomber detonated his explosives when Iraqi police and members of a volunteer security force prevented him from entering the gate of the compound belonging to the state-run North Oil Company, a police officer said. The police officer said most of the 22 dead were civilians, and included three children. Also killed were guards of the oil company and members of the volunteer force, one of the so-called Awakening Councils


Mosul:
#1: Brigadier Abdel-Kareem al-Juburi, the chief of Nineveh's security operations room, also told VOI that US soldiers had killed a man and his son and arrested a 15-year-old boy during a raid on a house in south-eastern Mosul, northern Iraq in the early hours of Tuesday. The dead man had been an air force officer during the reign of former dictator Saddam Hussein and had recently been working at a Mosul drugstore, al-Juburi said.

#2: The governor of Nineveh Province, Duraid Kashmula, escaped unharmed from a roadside bomb attack near his convoy in the provincial capital Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, Kashmula told Reuters. His driver and one of his guards were wounded in the attack.


Kurdistan:
#1: Turkish airstrikes and artillery have hit more than 200 Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq since Dec. 16, killing hundreds of insurgents, the military said Tuesday.

#2: Iraqi officials say Turkish warplanes have launched fresh air raids against PKK targets in the province of Dahuk in northern Iraq. Colonel Hussein Tamar, a border guard official, said the warplanes bombed an area inside Iraq near the border with Turkey on Tuesday. The attack caused no casualties as the villages in the area were depopulated and residents had evacuated homes fearing the attacks earlier this month.


Al Anbar Prv:
Ramadi:
#1: The Iraqi police found an unidentified boy lying on a main road west of Ramadi on Tuesday morning, a security fource in Anbar province said.

Fallujah:
#1: A local police source from Falluja city said on Tuesday that three U.S. soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol vehicle north of the city.


Casualty Reports:

Spc. Michael D. Hauser suffered a severe brain wound from an attack by a suicide bomber in Iraq, is now being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He arrived in the United States over the weekend on a special medical flight from Germany after being treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center there. The 23-year-old soldier was wounded by shrapnel Nov. 27 when a woman blew herself up northeast of Baghdad. Hauser, according to e-mails from his father, Ray Hauser, “is still in a sedated coma. [His] brain [is] extremely swollen [on] the right side. [His] body is shivering, as he has a cold thermal blanket on him to keep down his fever. “[He] has been given a drug to help him forget the tragic incident in Iraq. The doctors call it milk of amnesia. He is to get a new bed which is similar to the one he had in Landstuhl, Germany. It shakes and can turn right to left.” The soldier is also on a respirator and receives nourishment through an intestinal feeding tube, according to his father.