Twin car bombings kill at least 80

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Twin suicide car bombings exploded within 20 minutes of each other in Iraq's north today, killing at least 80 people and wounding around 150 in attacks targeting a Kurdish political office and an outdoor market, police said.

The attacks in Kirkuk began around noon when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed truck near the concrete blast walls of the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The explosion blasts a 30-foot-deep crater in the pavement and collapsed part of the roof of the one-story PUK office.

Soon after, the second bomber attacked the Haseer market, 700 yards away, destroying stalls and cars, said Kirkuk police Brig. Sarhat Qadir.

The market is frequented by Kurds in Kirkuk, a city where tensions are high between the Kurdish and Arab populations. At least 80 people were killed and about 140 wounded, said police Brig. Burhan Tayeb Taha.

The attack is believed to be the deadliest suicide bombing in Kirkuk -- 180 miles north of Baghdad -- where violence tends to be on a smaller scale of shootings, roadside bombs and kidnap-slayings, often linked to the struggle between the city's Kurds and Arabs. Today's blast came just over a week after one of the Iraq conflict's deadliest suicide attacks hit a village about 50 miles south of Kirkuk, killing more than 160 people.

Iraqi officials have said Sunni insurgents are moving further north to carry out attacks, fleeing U.S. offensives in and around Baghdad, including in the city of Baqouba, a stronghold of extremists on the capital's northwestern doorstep.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops launched a new offensive south of Baghdad aimed at stopping weapons and fighters from moving into the capital, the military said today.

The statement did not say where the new sweep, codenamed Marne Avalanche, is tak-ing place.

The military also announced today that an American soldier died from wounds received yesterday in a bombing in Ninevah province, northwest of Kirkuk.

Violence appears to have eased in Baghdad in recent weeks -- but attacks, including deadly car bombs, happen daily.

A string of attacks this morning in the capital killed at least 14 people.

In the deadliest, a roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol passed in the city's northeast outskirts, killing five soldiers and wounding nine, an army officer said.

Two car bombs struck, one driven by a suicide bomber who struck a police checkpoint on a major road leading to a major Interior Ministry building inside the Green Zone. Two policemen were killed and seven people wounded, a police official said.

A parked car bomb went off in the central district of Karradah, exploding near Masbah Square, killing one person, wounding three others and leaving nearby shops burned, a police official said. Yesterday, a car bomb went off about a half-mile away, killing 10 people.

Other deaths in Baghdad were caused by mortars, shootings and roadside bombs, according to police officials. Also, 22 bullet-riddled bodies were found dumped in various locations of Baghdad, apparently the latest victims of sectarian violence, police said. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the reports.

A group of 24 Iranians escaped from detention in an Iraqi police station in the southern town of Badra this week, police in the town said. They broke out Saturday evening, and while four were quickly recaptured, the remainder may have fled across the nearby border, a police officer in the nearby city of Kut said.

The Iranians had been detained on suspicion of illegally entering the country, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. Thousands of Iranians enter Iraq -- particularly the Shiite heartland in the south -- for pilgrimage and business, but the U.S. also accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards of organizing Shiite militants into cells and arming them to attack U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Meanwhile, parliament convened today as Iraqi politicians tried to end a pair of boycotts of the legislature -- by Sunni legislators and by Shiite lawmakers loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- that are holding up work on crucial reforms sought by Washington.

In Washington, today, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, said he's "extremely doubtful" that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be able to secure the country and allow American forces to leave any time soon.

"There is no chance that the Iraqi forces could take over at any time, or certainly by the first of the year," Hamilton said in a nationally broadcast interview. "All of the support efforts, logistical and medical and so forth, they are not close to being able to meet," Hamilton said.

"The most important is inclusivity," he added. "That is making sure that you include all elements of Iraqi society in the government," he said. "They're not close at all. The president gave them a satisfactory rating. But all they've done is create a committee" to work on a host of legislative issues aimed at completing the transition from the Saddam Hussein era.

"I am extremely doubtful about it. He's had quite a bit of time now. He's known exactly what he's had to do. He hasn't done it. His rhetoric is pretty good. His performance is pretty bad," Hamilton said in an interview with on NBC's "Today" show.

The former Democratic congressman from Indiana, long a major player in foreign affairs issues, was interviewed on the same day that al-Maliki told NBC News in an interview that he now believes Iraqi forces will be ready to secure the country on their own by the end of the year.

Hamilton's comments also came at a time when, at home in the United States unity within the Republican Party on Iraq is frayed, although holding up so far. But more pressure is being applied in this area as lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties float proposals in the Senate to get U.S. troops out of Iraq soon.

Democrats will try again this week to set a deadline for the reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq.

On the GOP side, two moderate Republicans with respected foreign policy credentials have proposed their own hurry-up initiative, winning a polite but clear rejection from the White House.

President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said "No" when asked yesterday whether Bush could live with the proposal by Sens. John Warner of Virginia and Richard Lugar of Indiana.

He said the administration's "very orderly process" for reviewing its Iraq plans, keyed on a mid-September appraisal of progress, should be allowed to play out without preconditions.

"They've done a useful service in indicating the kinds of things that we should be thinking about," Hadley said of the senators. "But the time to begin that process is September."

The Senate's Democratic leadership also is cool to the Warner-Lugar proposal, but for different reasons. Democrats favor tougher steps to restrict Bush's options, but need more Republicans to peel away from Bush before they can prevail.

The two GOP senators said nothing in their proposal would bind Bush to a withdrawal timetable or throw the September review off track. But it does suggest patience is running thin with Bush's course of action even among some Republicans who have been behind him.

"The president will have to make some changes and I'm confident the president will do so," Warner said.

Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, a presidential contender, predicted enough Republicans would defect from the White House line on Iraq in the months ahead to enable the Democratic majority to overcome delaying tactics in the Senate and ultimately override any Bush veto.

Democrats are coordinating a week of maneuvering that will call to account the small but growing number of wavering Republicans.

One Democratic measure last week, which sought to influence troop deployments, fell four votes short of the 60 needed to advance.

Lugar and Warner said their proposal asks that Bush start thinking now about different options and seek to boost diplomacy. They cited an over-stretched military and growing terrorist threats around the world.

But that does not mean an abandonment of a U.S. presence in Iraq, they said.

"This nation of ours has got to remain in that area," Warner said, pointing to the United States' "vital security interests" involving Middle East oil and relations with Israel.

Hadley appeared on ABC's "This Week," "Fox News Sunday," CBS' "Face the Nation" and CNN's "Late Edition." Warner spoke on ABC; Biden on CNN.

source : www.yorkdispatch.com