30 minutes ago
By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military tanker truck exploded on a road outside Baghdad on
Friday, and witnesses said it killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded one.
Before dawn Friday, another blast hit the office of Iraq (news - web sites)'s major
Shiite party, killing one Iraqi woman and wounding five others, witnesses said.
That attack came the day after Shiites buried a senior politician assassinated
Wednesday as he left his home in Baghdad. Officials of the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution party blamed the killing and explosion on Saddam Hussein (news -
web sites) loyalists.
The explosion brought down half of a one-story residential building in western
Baghdad, which also housed a party branch office.
Rahim Jabar, who lives in the building, said his sister was killed in the attack and
five other residents were wounded.
Supreme Council members were rushing to the scene.
An anti-Saddam rally was planned in the capital later Friday.
There was no official confirmation immediately of the tanker truck explosion, near Abu
Ghraib on the road from Baghdad to Fallujah, nor of the death toll reported by
witnesses.
On Thursday, the military reported that rebels had killed a U.S. soldier in the first
fatal ambush for the U.S. military since Saddam's capture Saturday.
The soldier was killed late Wednesday when a 1st Armored Division patrol came under
fire in northwest Baghdad, the military said. A second soldier and an Iraqi
interpreter were wounded. According to official reports, 314 U.S. soldiers have been
killed in combat since the war began March 20. There have been 199 soldiers killed in
hostile action since U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) declared the end
of major combat on May 1. Another 144 soldiers have died in non-hostile incidents,
according to the Pentagon (news - web sites).
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) called Thursday for
a Jan. 15 meeting of major players to discuss what role the international body might
play when Iraq makes the transition from U.S. occupation.
Frustrated that neither the Iraqi Governing Council nor the U.S.-led coalition running
the country have given him specific answers, Annan said it was time to sit down with
representatives from both bodies.
"It has to be a three-way conversation," he said. "Once we have that, I will make a
judgment."
Meanwhile, Moscow signaled its willingness to start negotiations to forgive Iraq's
US$8 billion debt to Russia. And Japan ordered 1,000 troops to pack up for a
humanitarian mission to Iraq - readying ground, air and naval forces for their first
operation in a combat zone since World War II.
In Baghdad overnight, some 140 U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of 82nd Airborne
Division raided a middle-class neighborhood near Baghdad international airport and
arrested five of seven suspected guerrillas.
They included a suspected bomb maker, according to the raid commander, Cpt. Joel
Kostelac of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
At a briefing in Baghdad on Thursday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said there had been 24
engagements with guerrillas in the previous 24 hours. He said attacks on U.S.-led
coalition forces were fewer than last month, though attacks on Iraqi civilians and
security forces had increased.
Since Saddam's capture, U.S. forces have conducted major operations in Samarra, a
focus of guerrilla resistance 60 miles north of Baghdad and about 20 miles south of
where the former Iraqi leader was found hiding in a tiny underground refuge.
In Tikrit, 30 miles north of Samarra, 86 people were arrested including 12 on a U.S.
target list, Sgt. Robert Cargie, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, said
Thursday. Soldiers also discovered a weapons cache of 200 AK47 assault rifles and some
bomb-making material.
Two Iraqis trying to attack U.S. soldiers were killed during the Samarra operations,
in which troops smashed the gates of homes and the doors of workshops and junkyards
searching for guerrillas.
Also Thursday, Baghdad residents snapped up copies of an Iraqi newspaper with a
front-page photo of Saddam sitting in his jail cell with longtime opponent Ahmad
Chalabi, a member of Iraq's American-picked Governing Council and once a Pentagon
favorite to succeed Saddam.
The picture, covering most of the front page of the Al-Moutamar newspaper, which
Chalabi publishes, was taken Sunday and shows Saddam sitting on a floor leaning
against a bare tile wall, wearing a white robe and a jacket, while Chalabi sits on a
chair nearby, leaning forward as if talking to the captured dictator.
The edition sold out on newsstands by midday Thursday, with some vendors selling
copies for more than double the price. Iraqi papers have run the U.S. military's
photos of Saddam in custody - but Iraqis are eager for any look at the man who ruled
over them for more than two decades.
"I would pay double price, even more, to see the man closely," said Kadhim Abdel
Razek, 57. "I just want to see what he is wearing, what shape he is in to compare it
to the picture in my mind."
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
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