New suicide operation in Iraq kill six; weekly editor killed
While the employees of the ICRC (Red Cross) and the Iraqi police were still collecting remains of victims of Baghdad's suicide operations, a suicider yesterday blew up a booby trapped car in al-Falouja and the operation resulted in killing six persons at a time when resistance operations continued against the US occupation forces where two Americans were killed and 10 injured during the two past days.
The Iraqi police said that a booby trapped car went off in a main street in al-Falouja city and resulted in killing 6 persons. Eye witnesses said "a Toyota blew up in front of an electricity generation station in the city near a girls school." Tawfiq Mujbil said he was riding his car behind the booby trapped car. He added "It stopped in front of the electricity company, one men got out and the second stayed in the car. Seconds later, and it blew up."
Meantime, the American occupation army announced yesterday that one gunman killed one of the three deputies of the chairman of Baghdad's municipality on Sunday. The same day when the Iraqi resistance targeted al-Rasheed hotel in Baghdad when an American army colonel was killed. A spokesman for the occupation forces said that the killed man is Fares Abdul Razzaq al-Qassam, noting that the attacker opened fire at al-Qassam and fled immediately.
Al-Qassam, who occupied the same post under the administrator of the toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before he joined the occupation authority had returned from the donors states conference for reconstructing Iraq which was held in Madrid.
Meantime, a patrol for the British forces in al-Basra was attacked and the attack resulted in wounding two soldiers whose identity was not disclosed as well as two contractors with them, one is an Iraqi. This was the third attack of its kind in three days.
One eye witness said that two Iraqis opened fire at a sedan car belonging to the British forces, the wounded persons were inside, adding that a mortar exploded then at the site of the attack.
On the other hand, the Iraqi police said that unidentified persons opened fire at the chief editor of the Iraqi weekly "Bedoun Itijah" (Arabic for without direction) Ahmad Shawkat in al-Musil while he was making a telephobe call and he was killed immediately.
An Iraqi police officer said that one of Shawkat's colleagues informed him that the two gunmen followed him to the roof of his office and one of them opened fire at him. His daughter Rawa blamed Islamists for the killing of her father, who, according to her received messages weeks ago warning him to close his paper. She explained "He used to write against resistance, against the Americans, against the local government and against the former government."
Witnesses said that three Iraqi civilians were killed and many others were wounded in an attack by missiles at the main police center in al-Musil.
Meanwhile, the American forces backed by Apache planes arrested 50 Iraqis in a raid launched near Baqouba which has witnessed numerous attacks by the occupation forces.