Bombings kill 16 in Baghdad, Mosul

By Liz Sly
Chicago Tribune

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — At least 16 people died in suicide bombings in Baghdad and Mosul yesterday as insurgents stepped up their campaign to undermine Iraq's security forces and sow ethnic tensions before elections scheduled for January.

Suicide attackers in two vehicles killed at least seven people in a huge explosion at a police station in the heart of Baghdad, and nine members of a Kurdish militia died when a suicide bomber rammed their minivan in the northern city of Mosul.

In the first strike of the day, two suicide bombers simultaneously detonated separate vehicles outside a Baghdad police station opposite the entrance to the fortified Green Zone, the U.S. military said. The explosions could be heard for miles and shattered windows in government ministries and offices inside the zone.

The police station is directly opposite the main checkpoint leading into the Green Zone, the closely guarded enclave in the heart of Baghdad that houses the U.S. Embassy and the offices of Iraq's interim government. The area was crowded with employees arriving for work at the time.

It was the second attack in two days to target police in Baghdad, adding to fears that the insurgents are shifting their campaign from Mosul back to Baghdad after a period of near calm.

On Friday, 16 police died when their station was briefly overrun by insurgents in southwestern Baghdad, and 14 people were killed in a suicide bombing against a Shiite mosque in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah.

Later yesterday, a suicide bomber rammed a car into a minivan carrying members of the Kurdish peshmerga militia in Mosul, where ethnic tensions have been rising between the northern city's Kurdish and Arab communities. Reports from the city said at least nine militiamen belonging to the pro-American Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were killed in the blast.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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