Blast in Baghdad's Sadr City kills 4 Americans
BAGHDAD (AP) - June 24, 2008 U.S. troops captured a suspect who tested positive for explosive
residue after fleeing the scene, the military said. It blamed
Shiite extremists for the attack.
The explosion occurred a day after a suspected Sunni gunman
opened fire on U.S. soldiers attending a municipal council meeting
southeast of Baghdad, killing two of the troops and wounding three
others. An interpreter was also killed in that attack.
Tuesday's blast occurred in the office of the council's deputy
chief as Americans and Iraqi officials were gathered nearby about
half an hour before a meeting to elect a new chairman, said Hassan
Karim, Sadr City's top administrator.
Karim said he was sitting in his office, which is located at the
same building and about 50 yards from the targeted office, when the
bomb exploded. He said he ran out of his office and found the
corridors engulfed in smoke.
He couldn't confirm the number of casualties, saying that
several employees and visitors were inside the building.
"I only saw three council members on the ground who were
wounded before the Americans ordered us to stay in another office
fearing another explosion could take place," Karim told the
Associated Press in a telephone interview.
After that, he said, the U.S. troops started investigating the
employees and the guards of the building. A witness said the
Americans rounded up the guards in the immediate aftermath. U.S.
troops sealed off the building and the area.
The district council office is in a southern section of Sadr
City that is largely controlled by U.S. and Iraqi troops following
weeks of fighting in the area amid a government crackdown against
the militias.
Deputy council chief Hassan Hussein Shammah, who was believed to
be the attack's main target, was wounded in his leg.
"We were getting ready for the weekly meeting to discuss the
services in the area. Suddenly a huge explosion took place," he
told AP Television News from his hospital bed.
The U.S. military said one soldier was wounded in addition to
the two soldier fatalities. U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe
Nantongo said the dead American civilians included one State
Department and one Defense Department employee.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Berlin for a
conference on Palestinian security, was informed of the attack
shortly after it occurred and spoke with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq
Ryan Crocker about it, according to State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack.
An official of the Iraqi Interior Ministry said six Iraqi
civilians were killed and 10 others wounded. He spoke on condition
of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the
information.
U.S. military officers have been working vigorously to restore
and promote local administrations amid a sharp drop in attacks over
the past year, with the goal of preventing areas from falling back
under the control of rival Sunni and Shiite extremists.
Their increased presence in local communities has made them more
vulnerable to attacks, but American commanders have cited it as a
necessary factor in a strategy that has helped drive down the
levels of violence to the lowest point in more than four years.
The U.S. military blamed Tuesday's attack on "special groups
criminals," a term it uses for Shiite militiamen refusing to
follow a cease-fire order by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
"This was the fourth meeting of this district council, led by
hardworking Iraqis determined to make a difference and set Sadr
City off on the right path. Special Groups are afraid of progress
and afraid of empowering the people," said Lt. Col. John
Digiambatista, operations officer with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team,
4th Infantry Division.
The attack in Madain also targeted Americans who were attending
a municipal council meeting in the area, also known as Salman Pak,
about 14 miles southeast of Baghdad.
U.S. troops killed the assailant, who was believed to be a
former member of the municipal council, after the attack, which
occurred in an area with a history of Sunni-Shiite tension.
In other violence Tuesday, gunmen killed the head of the local
council in Abu Dshir, a Shiite enclave in the mainly Sunni area of
Dora in southern Baghdad. Police said the council chief Mahdi Alwan
was a member of al-Sadr's movement.
The U.S.-backed Iraqi military, meanwhile, pressed forward with
efforts to assert government control over al-Sadr's Mahdi Army
militia and other armed groups in the southern city of Amarah.
The Iraqi Defense Ministry announced a three-day deadline for
all parties to voluntarily evacuate government buildings in Maysan
province, of which Amarah is the capital, or face removal by force.
A provincial government official also said Iraqi security forces
had begun a campaign to remove all portraits and pictures of senior
religious figures from walls, buildings and the streets in the
province.
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Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Qassim Abdul-Zahra
contributed to this report.