Bombs Hit Shiites in Baghdad; Turkish Threats Grow Acute - New York Times

Bombs Hit Shiites in Baghdad; Turkish Threats Grow Acute - New York Times

June 7, 2007
Bombs Hit Shiites in Baghdad; Turkish Threats Grow Acute
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and KHALID W. HASSAN

BAGHDAD, June 6 — A pair of car bombs struck one of the most heavily protected Shiite areas on Wednesday, the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 25, the Iraqi police said.

Thirty-four bodies were also found strewn about the capital, the latest evidence of a rising toll of sectarian killings more than three months after the beginning of the increase in American troops.

At least 167 bodies have been found in Baghdad in the first six days of June, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. The numbers remain below the average seen before the rise in American forces but are much higher than the levels recorded in March and April.

As the rising body count stoked new concerns about how well the troop expansion will tamp down execution-style killings, Iraqi and American officials got a jolt late in the day when reports emerged suggesting that Turkish forces had begun a long-threatened incursion into northern Iraq to hunt Kurdish guerrillas who stage attacks inside Turkey.

The reports, attributed to Turkish military officials, said thousands of soldiers crossed the border in pursuit of members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or P.K.K.

American and Turkish officials quickly denied the reports. Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, also said in a telephone interview that while a large force of Turkish troops remained massed on the border, none had crossed into Iraq.

“There hasn’t been any Turkish military incursion or operation inside Iraqi territory,” Mr. Zebari said Wednesday evening.

Despite the official denials, two news agencies citing sources within the Turkish military continued to report that a limited cross-border attack had taken place.

The Turkish authorities have threatened to send troops over the border to hunt down P.K.K. rebels, who favor an independent Kurdistan. The State Department classifies the party as a “foreign terrorist organization” and says its attacks in Turkey killed more than 500 people last year. As many as 3,500 Kurdish rebels are believed to live in remote mountainous areas of northern Iraq.

Mr. Zebari said that there had been some reports of 15,000 to 20,000 Turkish troops stationed on the border recently, but that he did not know the precise number.

Four more Americans have been killed, the military reported. One soldier was killed Tuesday by enemy gunfire in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad. Another was killed Wednesday in Diyala by an explosion. A third was killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday near Baiji, north of Baghdad. And one soldier was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday.

The spokesman for the American military command in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, suggested that it would be unwise to expect that there would not be ups and downs in the Baghdad security situation as the troop increase took hold.

“It’s uneven, and it will periodically spike up, like we saw with violence in May,” General Bergner said. He added that progress “will not be like flipping a light switch — it will be gradual, it will be nuanced, it will be subtle.”

He said the last of five additional brigades for the troop increase would begin operating in “the next couple of weeks.” He added that the new forces could take up to two months “to fully establish themselves” with Iraqi forces and civilians where they operate.

The insurgents who struck Wednesday in Kadhimiya detonated one bomb near a jail for women and another near a bus terminal at Zahra Square, the police said. Early reports put the death toll at seven, but an Interior Ministry official said three people were killed. A statement by the American military said that no civilians were killed and that only four were injured.

The area, not far from the Imam Kadhum Shrine, is dominated by Shiite Mahdi Army militiamen and Shiite soldiers, and the attack appeared to be the latest strike by Sunni insurgents.

More violence struck in Diyala Province, where at least 12 people were killed Wednesday, and 18 more wounded, according to the police.

Four civilians were killed and four wounded by gunmen in one attack in Baquba, the provincial capital. Another attack in Baquba killed four and wounded eight. Gunmen killed two civilians and wounded three in Muqdadiya. Militants also killed two people and wounded four in Balad Ruz, a Diyala police official said. And in Khalis, militants used a fake checkpoint to abduct 10 people.

A statement issued by the Islamic Army in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent group, asserted that it had reached a cease-fire with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after skirmishes between the groups last week in the Amariya district of western Baghdad.

The statement said the groups had agreed to referee disagreements. Military officials have said Sunni groups who object to Al Qaeda’s tactics have cooperated with American forces in Amariya to drive out Qaeda fighters.

An aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the influential Shiite cleric, was gunned down Tuesday near Najaf. Three gunmen assassinated the aide, Sheik Rahim al-Haznawi, Mr. Sistani’s representative in Mishkab, near Najaf, according to the Iraqi police.

An improvised bomb killed one policeman and wounded three others in Kirkuk, the police there said.

A director general of the Ministry of Immigration and Refugees was abducted in Baghdad near the Shiite enclave of Sadr City by kidnappers in four vehicles.

Insurgents attacking an American patrol detonated a bomb in western Baghdad, near a children’s hospital, wounding four civilians, an Interior Ministry official said. Another bomb, in the Mansour district, killed one civilian and wounded eight.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, Yerevan Adham from the Kurdish area and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Najaf, Kirkuk and Diyala.