Insurgents kill 38, wound dozens in attacks

BAGHDAD -- Insurgents launched a barrage of attacks yesterday that killed 38 people and wounded dozens more in less than 24 hours, with car bombings and ambushes that stretched from south of the capital to the northern city of Mosul.

The targets late Wednesday and yesterday included civilians, security forces, and a politician. The attacks began with three carloads of gunmen racing through a busy Baghdad marketplace Wednesday night and firing indiscriminately at people. Nine people were killed in that attack, said an Interior Ministry spokesman.

The deadliest attack came just before 8 a.m. yesterday when a suicide car bomber drove into a restaurant in Tuz Khormato, about 50 miles south of Kirkuk. Twelve diners were killed and 40 injured in the explosion, which ripped through the crowded restaurant.

The bomb torched several cars in the parking lot adjacent to the restaurant and left shattered windows throughout the area, according to Iraqi Defense Ministry and US military reports.

Among the dead was a bodyguard who worked for Iraq's Kurdish Deputy Prime Minister Rowsch Shaways, said Sarah al-Rawi, an aide to Shaways.

''The guards of the deputy prime minister were on their way from Irbil to Baghdad this morning in a normal routine," Rawi said in a phone interview. ''On their way to Baghdad, they stopped at the restaurant for a meal, and the suicide bomber struck the restaurant with his vehicle and detonated the car."

Shaways was not traveling with the guards.

Insurgent violence has claimed the lives of 12,000 Iraqis in the past 18 months, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said yesterday, putting the first official count on the largest category of victims from bombings, ambushes, and other increasingly deadly attacks.

The figure breaks down to an average of more than 20 civilians killed by bombings and other attacks each day. Authorities estimate that more than 10,500 of the victims were Shi'ite Muslims, based on the locations of the deaths, Jabr said.

The checkpoints and raids that leaders have dubbed Operation Lightning have brought all roads in and out of the capital under government control, said Jabr, the minister in charge of Iraq's police forces. The actions are meant to expose insurgent hide-outs in the city, he told reporters from some foreign news organizations, adding, ''Within the next few months, we can deal with all of the killings and assassinations."

Jabr said security forces had detained 700 ''terrorists" and killed 28 during the operation.

About 30 minutes after the attack in Tuz Khormato, a suicide car bomber attacked a civilian contractor convoy driving through Kirkuk, said First Sergeant Brian Thomas, a US military spokesman.

Four passersby were killed and 11 others injured, but the contractors who were targeted escaped injury, according to Iraq's Defense Ministry. The nationality of the contractors was not disclosed.

Later yesterday morning, a suicide car bomber attacked the convoy of the deputy head of the Diyala provincial council as he was driving to work in Baqubah. Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi and three of his bodyguards were killed in the blast, said Major Steven Warren, a US military spokesman in Baqubah.

Tamimi, a Shi'ite, previously was the mayor of Muqdadiyah. He stepped down from that post after being elected to the provincial council in January.

In the run-up to the election, politicians in Diyala Province became the favored targets of the insurgency. Eight interim provincial council members were assassinated. While serving as mayor of Muqdadiyah, Tamimi twice escaped attempts on his life, said Hanaa al-Daghistani, who heads the province's Culture and Media Department.

In one of those attacks, Daghistani said that Tamimi's brother was seriously injured and took months to recover. She discounted that his assassination was sectarian in nature.

''He was targeted because of his position," she said.

Tamimi's assassination follows the death of the governor of Anbar Province. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was found dead Sunday in a farmhouse in western Iraq weeks after he had been kidnapped.

Mahalawi's body was discovered after a shootout between foreign fighters, who were holding the governor captive, and US Army troops. American soldiers came under fire from the governor's captors while patrolling the area near the farmhouse.

In Mosul, two parked motorcycles rigged with explosives detonated near a coffee shop frequented by police, killing five Iraqis, wounding 13, and destroying several shops, the Associated Press reported.

In the Baghdad marketplace ambush on Wednesday, gunmen packed into three cars, sped through the area firing their weapons, said Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. ''Each car had three or four of them with automatic weapons," Rahman said.

The shooting happened in the Hurriyah district, a diverse enclave where Sunnis and Shi'ites live side by side. One neighborhood resident said he feared sectarian tensions had spiked in recent days as Iraqi security forces have been conducting a major operation dubbed Operation Lightning in Baghdad in an attempt to rid the capital of insurgents.

Material from the Washington Post was included in this report.