posted on August 22, 2004 02:07:17 PM new
Here is some of the lastest news from the Bush/Cheney Iraq war. It was posted on AOL today.
NAJAF, Iraq (Aug. 22) - Four U.S. Marines assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force have been killed in separate incidents in Iraq's volatile Anbar province, the military announced Sunday.
A car bomb also detonated near a U.S. military convoy outside Mosul, the military said. Two children were injured in the blast.
The bomb exploded as the convoy passed a road west of the city, said Capt. Angela Bowman, a U.S. military spokeswoman.
In the afternoon, militants atacked U.S. forces with mortars, prompting another round of clashes that lasted for around a half hour. At least three people were killed and 18 injured during fighting overnight, said Tawfiq Mohammed of Najaf General Hospital.
Fighting in the nearby city of Kufa on Saturday killed 40 of the militants, according to a source in the Interior Ministry. However, Mahmoud al-Soudani, head of al-Sadr's office in west Baghdad, called the claim ''government propaganda'' and said only one militant had died in Kufa Saturday.
In separate violence north of Baghdad on Sunday, a car bomb exploded in the town of Khalis, killing two people and injuring 14 others, including a deputy provincial governor, Bassam al-Khadran, who was lightly wounded, Iraqi officials said.
A suicide bomber detonated the car, laden with explosives, as al-Khadran was traveling to work in a small convoy, said Gen. Waleed al-Azawi, chief of police for Diyala province. Both fatalities and seven of the injured were al-Khadran's bodyguards, he said. One civilian was also wounded.
In Jur al-Nadaf, 12 miles south of Baghdad, attackers sprayed a police vehicle with machine-gun fire, killing two policemen before fleeing, said police Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman of the Interior Ministry.
In Baghdad, assailants fired two mortar shells into the city center on Sunday, wounding at least one civilian and damaging a shop and several houses, said Abdul-Rahman.
In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi intelligence officer kidnapped nearly a week ago and threatened with death if U.S. and Iraqi forces did not end the violence in Najaf was found dead, his body riddled with bullets, police said Sunday.
In a video shown Tuesday on the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television station, a group calling itself the Defense of the Holy Sites Brigades said they had snatched the man.
Abdul Jawad's body was found in a deserted area Saturday, said Basra police commander Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kadhim al-Ali. It wasn't clear if the group was behind Abdul Jawad's slaying.
On Saturday in Najaf, U.S. troops and al-Sadr's fighters fought brief but heavy clashes, punctuated by gunfire and explosions, with one blast hitting the street 50 yards from the Imam Ali Shrine.
Meanwhile, guards at a prison in the southern city of Amarah helped 82 prisoners - all common criminals - escape early Sunday, a prison official said.
Fifty-seven of the escapees were recaptured, and the remainder were being sought, said Lt. Col. Nadhim Zayer Hattab, the director of Amarah's Central Prison.
''There was a deal between some prison guards and prisoners,'' he said. ''There was no attack on the prison.''
AP-NY-08-22-04 1450EDT
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