IRAQ: Iraqi forces thwarted a triple suicide attack on Baghdad's Green Zone government compound yesterday, killing two bombers before they reached a checkpoint and capturing one alive.
Police guarding the checkpoint spotted what they identified as a suicide bomber driving towards them during the morning rush hour, said US military spokesman Brig Gen Donald Alston. They opened fire, and the bomb went off before reaching the checkpoint.
Two other bombers, strapped with explosives, then ran toward them but were gunned down. One survived and after an Iraqi explosives expert defused his bomb he was arrested. He was being treated in hospital in the custody of Iraqi police, but US officers expected to interview him at some point.
Gen Alston said the attack "failed in every way because of discipline and courage under fire of the Iraqi security forces". He believed no bystanders were killed. Doctors at the city's Yarmouk hospital said they had seen two bodies from the attack and five people were wounded, apparently including the captured bomber.
The Green Zone, comprising former palaces, hotels and government buildings along the bank of the Tigris River, is surrounded by concrete blast walls. It houses both the Shia and Kurdish-led government and its US backers.
It frequently comes under attack by mortars or by bombers and gunmen outside its gates.
US forces also announced the capture of a man they described as a senior lieutenant of Iraqi al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
This is the capture of a second person described as a key aide to the Jordanian militant this week. They said Abu Seba, caught in Ramadi on July 9th, had played a role in the kidnapping and killing of Egypt's envoy to Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif, snatched from the street on July 2nd.
Catching yesterday's wounded suicide bomber is also a rare intelligence opportunity since few are caught alive.
Most suicide bombers are believed to be young Sunni Arab men from outside Iraq, loyal to groups like Zarqawi's. Such groups partly overlap with the insurgency among Iraq's own Sunni Arab minority.
Gen Alston said there were 23 car bombs during the past week,the lowest weekly tally of suicide car bombs in 11 weeks. However, such bombings have not become less deadly. Yesterday saw funerals for some of the 27 people, mostly children, killed on Wednesday when a bomber blew up his vehicle near US troops.
In a nation numbed to horrors, the attack on children stood out. The Iraqi edition of pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat called it the "Mother of all Massacres". One US soldier was among those killed, and three were among the injured.
Meanwhile gunmen killed three policemen and wounded two when they shot at their car in the town of Rashad. In Kirkuk an Iraqi soldier was killed and a female comrade wounded by gunmen in a car.