Iraq: Insurgents stepped up attacks across Iraq yesterday, killing at least 30 people in a spate of bombings and shootings which followed a threat by al-Qaeda to launch a new phase of violence.
The US military announced that it had caught a suspected al-Qaeda operative believed to be responsible for the killing last week of a key Sunni tribal leader in Anbar province. Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who met US president George W. Bush two weeks ago in Anbar, was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday. He led an alliance of tribes which helped US troops to push al-Qaeda out of much of the vast western area.
Suspected al-Qaeda militants shot dead 14 people in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Muqdadiya, north of Baghdad, and set fire to 12 shops in the town, Iraqi police said. A suicide-bomber killed six people and wounded 18 at an outdoor cafe in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato. In Baghdad, eight people died in four separate bombings.
Besides the attacks by insurgents, Iraqi police said that security contractors were involved in an incident in which up to 10 people were shot dead in Baghdad's western Mansour district.
The US military said that security contractors working for the State Department were involved in an incident, but gave no further details.
An al-Qaeda-led group, the Islamic State in Iraq, said on Saturday that it was launching a new round of attacks to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which minority Sunnis started observing on Thursday and majority Shia on Friday. A sustained campaign would undermine US and Iraqi assertions that a seven-month security crackdown had disrupted the Sunni Islamist network's operations in Baghdad while also reducing attacks from other groups.
Mr Bush, announcing a limited withdrawal last week of some 20,000 troops by next July, said that the cuts were possible because of progress in improving security and because "ordinary life" was returning to Baghdad.
A US commander said that al-Qaeda had been "neutralised inside Baghdad proper" and "fractured" elsewhere. But he conceded that it was still a threat.
- (Reuters)