IRAQ:Three car bombs killed 24 people and wounded scores in Baghdad yesterday as war-weary residents awaited the start of a sweeping US-Iraqi crackdown on sectarian bloodletting in the city.
The US military said a command centre in Baghdad that will oversee the offensive would become operational in the next few days. US officers had said on Sunday it would be activated yesterday and the operation would begin "soon thereafter".
In the worst blast yesterday, a car bomb targeting a petrol station in the religiously mixed southern neighbourhood of Saidiya killed 10 people and wounded 62, while eight people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a garage.
A car bomb exploded near a children's hospital in Andalus Square in central Baghdad, killing six and wounding nine.
In Amil, a religiously mixed area of Baghdad, gunmen in police commando uniforms dragged people from their homes in Janabiyeen, a Sunni enclave that is home to members of the Janabiyeen tribe, and set at least five houses ablaze, witnesses said. "I can see eight bodies, including an old man and two teenagers. No one can retrieve them because there are snipers on the roofs of some houses," said one resident.
A British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra, taking to 100 the number killed in action since the 2003 invasion, British defence officials said. - (Reuters)