tinyurl.com/5sude -> www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/11cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1100235600&en=b76e3d2520471f73&ei=5094&partner=homepage
European Pressphoto Agency In Baghdad, a powerful suicide car bomb exploded on a busy street, killin g at least 17 people and wounding at least 30 others, military officials said. As US Pushes Deeper Into Falluja, Rebels Attack Elsewhere By EDWARD WONG Published: November 11, 2004 B AGHDAD, Nov. In Baghdad, a powerful suicide car bomb exploded on a busy commercial str eet this morning, killing at least 17 people and wounding at least 30 ot hers, police and hospital officials said. In the evening, explosions rip pled across the capital with an intensity not seen here since August, wh en American soldiers fought a Shiite uprising in the south. Violence surged through the so-called Sunni triangle in central Iraq, wit h ambushes, bombings and mortar attacks jolting Tikrit, Kirkuk, Hawija, Samarra and the provincial capital of Ramadi, 30 miles west of Falluja, which is 35 miles west of Baghdad. Trying to halt the slide into chaos, the interim government imposed curfews across the string of cities. American military officials have said in recent days that insurgent leade rs probably fled Falluja before the American drive into the city and mig ht try to organize a bloody counteroffensive of the sort that now appear s to be unfolding across the country. In Mosul, insurgents overran a half-dozen police stations and looted the buildings of weapons, ammunition and body armor, police officials and wi tnesses said. By the afternoon, they had seized five bridges across the Tigris, which splits the city in half. Columns of smoke snaked into the sky, and residents said the city, the third largest in Iraq, had been th rown into a whirlwind of chaos not seen since the Americans first invade d Iraq in March 2003. The American military said it had launched a major counteroffensive in th e southern parts of Mosul, to try to contain the violence and keep the g uerrillas from seizing the government center. But by nightfall, carloads of guerrillas continued to roam the streets freely, melting away at the approach of American troops. Paul Hastings, said in a t elephone interview near midnight. "It's been going on for much of the da y, and it's still going on." The new violence in the north of the country came as American marines and soldiers renewed their three-day-old push through Falluja, in central I raq. The invasion began at the northern boundary of the city early Monda y but had slowed considerably along a line marked by the main thoroughfa re through town. Richard Myers, said coalition forces now controlled well more than half of Fall uja. "Things are going, I think, as planned," he said today on the CBS "Early Show." American military officials in Baghdad said 18 American troops and 5 memb ers of the Iraqi security forces had been killed since the beginning of the Falluja operation. Another 178 troops of the American-led forces hav e been wounded, as well as 34 Iraqis. "Today our forces are conducting deliberate clearing operations within th e city, going house to house, building to building looking for arms cach es," Maj Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the First Marine Division, said in a televised briefing from Falluja. Various military officials have estimated the number of dead guerrillas i n the hundreds, out of as many as 3,000 who were thought to have gathere d in Falluja before the American-led attack. American forces have also t aken an undetermined number of suspects prisoner. The Baghdad car bomb exploded on Saddoun Street, a wide avenue running th rough the heart of downtown, and incinerated a dozen cars and destroyed storefronts along the strip. Smoke filled the sky in center of the capit al and charred bodies lay scattered across the street and encased in bur ning vehicles. The bomber had tried to ram a convoy of three sport utility vehicles trav eling south, the type of car favored by Western contractors, an Iraqi Na tional Guardsman, Ali Safi, said at the scene. That area of Baghdad is f requently attacked by suicide bombers, many of whom aim their strikes at the Baghdad Hotel, which houses foreign security contractors. Convoys o f sport utility vehicles often roll in and out of the compound, and a co mmon street rumor among Iraqis is that the hotel serves as the local hea dquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency or of the Israeli intellige nce agency, the Mossad.
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