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BAGHDAD, Iraq Jan 19, 2005 — A wave of car
bombings shook the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing
at least 12 people as rebels stepped up their
offensive to block the Jan. 30 national election.
Other attacks were reported north and south of the
capital, but the U.N. election chief said only a
sustained onslaught could stop the ballot.
U.S. military officials put the death toll from the
day's violence at 26, but the number was based on
initial field reports and witnesses and Iraqi
officials put the toll lower. Iraqi authorities said
12 people were killed in the bombings and another
person killed in a drive-by shooting on a Kurdish
political party office.
Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq said it carried out the
first of the day's blasts, at the Australian Embassy
in the capital. A truck packed with explosives went
off outside the concrete barriers in front of the
embassy about 7 a.m., killing two people and
wounding several, including two Australian soldiers.
"A lion of monotheism and faith … carried out a
martyrdom operation nearby the Australian Embassy,"
the group al-Qaida in Iraq said in a Web statement.
The group is led by Jordanian-born militant Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, who has allied himself with Osama
bin Laden's terror network.
A half hour after the embassy blast, another car
bomb killed six at a police station located next to
a hospital in eastern Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior
Ministry said.
A third car bombing struck at the main gate to an
Iraqi military garrison located at a disused airport
in central Baghdad. An officer at the Iraqi Defense
Ministry said three Iraqi army troops were killed in
that attack.
The U.S. military also said a car bomb detonated
southwest of Baghdad International Airport, killing
two Iraqi security guards.
Hours later, another car bomb went off in northern
Baghdad around noon near a bank and a Shiite Muslim
mosque. Iraqi police said one person was killed and
one killed at that bombing.
Elsewhere in the capital, insurgents in a car
fired on a Baghdad office of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, killing one of its members and wounding
another, PUK officials said.
Outside the capital, Maj. Gen. Wirya Maarouf, the
dean of a police academy in the Kurdish region of
northern Iraq, escaped an assassination attempt when
gunmen opened fire on his convoy in the city of
Irbil. One bystander was killed and another injured,
said police Col. Tharwat AbdulKarim.
In the northern city of Dahuk, a roadside bomb
exploded near the convoy of provincial Gov. Nejrivan
Ahmed but he was not injured, AbdulKarim said.
An Iraqi police officer was killed Wednesday in
another car bombing in the largely Shiite city of
Hillah south of Baghdad, the Polish military said.
Fresh clashes erupted Wednesday between U.S. troops
and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul. A car
bomb exploded beside a U.S. convoy in the eastern
part of the city, and two Iraqis were killed when
American troops opened fire after the blast,
witnesses said. There were no reported casualties
among the Americans.
Also, in the city of Kirkuk, two human rights
leaders were killed, officials said. Their bodies
were found shot in the head and chest after being
kidnapped Tuesday, police said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials had predicted a steady
increase in violence in the run-up to the election,
in which Iraqi voters will choose a National
Assembly and provincial legislatures. Sunni Muslim
insurgents have vowed to disrupt the ballot.
Carlos Valenzuela, the chief U.N. election adviser
in Iraq, said the intimidation of electoral workers
by guerrillas seeking to derail this month's
balloting is "high and very serious."
But Valenzuela told reporters Tuesday that only a
sustained onslaught by insurgents or the mass
resignation of electoral workers will prevent this
month's national elections from going ahead.
U.S. troops have stepped up raids across the
country, arresting scores of suspected insurgents in
hopes of aborting plans to disrupt the ballot.
On Wednesday, the U.S. military acknowledged that
its soldiers opened fire on a car as it approached
their checkpoint, killing two civilians in the
vehicle's front seat. Six children riding in the
backseat were unhurt.
It wasn't clear from a military statement whether
the two victims were the children's parents.
"Military officials extend their condolences for
this unfortunate incident," the statement said.
In China, authorities warned people to avoid
traveling to Iraq as diplomats tried to win the
release of eight Chinese laborers abducted by Iraqi
insurgents.
"Please don't rashly go to Iraq, in order to avoid
unforeseeable incidents," the Chinese Foreign
Ministry said in a statement.
The eight abducted Chinese, including two teenagers,
were shown in a video released Tuesday by
insurgents. The Foreign Ministry said it had asked
for help from Iraqi religious leaders who helped to
win the release of other Chinese abducted last year.
The latest abductees are from the southeastern
coastal province of Fujian, which sends thousands of
laborers each year to the Middle East and elsewhere.
Xinhua identified the eight men all from Fujian's
Pingtan County as Zhou Sunqin, 18, Zhou Sunlin, 19,
Wei Wu, 20, Lin Xiong, 35, Chen Qin'ai, 37, Lin
Zhong, 38, Lin Bin, 39 and and Lin Qiang, 40.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.
http://abcnews.go.com
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