Violence marks Iraq anniversary

An American hostage is murdered. Car bombs kill 58 at a street market. Police discover 29 bodies in a mass grave. And the US launches its biggest assault since the invasion. On the eve of its third anniversary, Audrey Gillan pieces together just another week in a war zone

Friday March 17, 2006
The Guardian

Friday March 10

· A six-year-old girl is killed by a suicide bomber as he blows himself up next to a US military convoy in Fallujah.

· The body of Tom Fox, one of four hostages held in Iraq for more than 100 days, is found dumped in the street. He has gunshot wounds to the head and chest. The 54-year-old was being held with three other member of the Canada-based Christian Peacemaker Teams, including the British man Norman Kember. The previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigade has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings.

· A US marine is killed alongside three members of one Iraqi family and an Iraqi soldier following a car bomb in Fallujah. It is later reported that five Iraqi policemen also died in the attack.

· The bodies of six men shot in the head are found in two Baghdad suburbs.

· Marine Lance Corporal Bunny Long, 22, of Modesto, California, is killed when a suicide bomber rams a truck filled with explosives into a building he is guarding in Anbar province, and the building collapses. He was due to go home in two weeks.

· The bullet-riddled bodies of two men - one of whom also had his throat slit - are brought to the morgue in Kut.

· A civilian is killed by a car bomb in Samarra, 100km north of Baghdad, aimed at Iraqi police. Another bomb, near the Sunni Qiba mosque, kills the imam and another man. Five people are wounded in the attacks.

· A 10-year-old boy dies and his eight-year-old friend is wounded by a roadside bomb as they play in the street southern city of Amarra.

· A policeman in Tikrit dies while disarming a roadside bomb. A second explosive device is detonated, killing him and wounding two others.

· A roadside bomb kills one person and wounds two others near Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad. A roadside device kills one and wounds two in Iskandiriya, 50km south of Baghdad.

Saturday March 11

· The general manager of the Iraqi television channel al-Iraqiya and his driver are shot dead on their way to work in Baghdad. Amjad Hamee and Anvvar Turkey are driving through the al-Khadra neighbourhood of the city when they are attacked.

· A roadside bomb explodes near a mosque in the small town of Yathrib, near Balad, 85km north of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding one.

· A 25-year-old man is killed in a US military raid on a house in the village of al-Thuluya, near Balad.

Sunday March 12

· A US marine dies in Anbar province, "due to enemy action".

· Gunmen ambush and kill Mohammad Najah, a local football player, in Latifiya, 40km south of Baghdad.

· The police mayor of Mahmoudiya, 32km south of Baghdad, is attacked and killed in an ambush.

· A US soldier dies of wounds received after a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad.

· Two civilians are killed and four are wounded when a mortar round lands on a paint shop in central Baghdad.

· Three car bombs devastate street markets in Sadr City, Baghdad, killing 58 people and wounding more than 200. The Associated Press reports that locals fire Kalashnikovs in the air as they run to pull burning bodies from the wreckage of the markets and surrounding shops.

· Eight bodies are found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the head in Rustamiya, a suburb in eastern Baghdad.

· Six people are killed and 14 wounded when a roadside bomb explodes as a US convoy passes in southern Baghdad.

· Drive-by gunmen open fire on a car in the western Biyaqa neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing its three occupants, including a member of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.

· A rocket tears apart a house in the western Jamiah neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing one occupant and injuring two others.

· Gunmen kill two police officers in two different incidents in Baghdad.

· Two Iraqi soldiers are killed and four are wounded when a roadside bomb goes off near their patrol in central Baghdad.

· Five soldiers are wounded when a roadside bomb explodes near an Iraqi army patrol in eastern Baghdad.

· Gunmen in a speeding car fire into a crowd of casual labourers in Amariyah, western Baghdad.

· In Jamiah, also in western Baghdad, a rocket lands near a house, killing one occupant and injuring two others.

· At least 20 bodies are received overnight at Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, many with gunshot wounds.

· Two army officers working in the Joint Coordination Centre in Dhuluiya, 40km north of Baghdad, are shot dead by gunmen.

Monday March 13

· Two American soldiers assigned to 2-28 Brigade Combat Team "die due to enemy action" while operating in Anbar province.

· The British defence secretary John Reid announces the withdrawal of 800 British troops from Iraq but says the move does not signal the start of a complete pullout of UK forces.

· Car bombs kill two civilians and two police officers in two separate attacks in Baghdad.

· A child is killed and three people are injured when they are hit by a mortar in the Shula district of Baghdad.

· A US soldier dies from his wounds after being hit by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.

· A civilian is killed and three more are wounded when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol goes off in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.

· Five bodyguards are wounded when a car bomb explodes near the convoy of the governor of Salahaddin province in Tikrit, 170 km north of Baghdad.

· Five people are killed and 18 wounded when a bomb targeting a police patrol explodes in Tikrit.

· Two policemen are killed and four are wounded when two car bombs explode in separate attacks on a police patrol in the northern of Kirkuk.

· Four policemen and six civilians are wounded when a roadside bomb hits a police patrol in central Baghdad.

· One person is killed and six are wounded when a roadside bomb explodes in Taji, 20km north of Baghdad.

Tuesday March 14

· In the Kamaliya district of south-east Baghdad, children playing football notice a terrible smell and report it to police who dig up 29 bodies from a pit, most of them in their underwear, all with gunshot wounds. Some have been gagged and bound and some show signs of having been tortured.

· The bodies of 15 people are found strangled, bound and gagged in a minibus parked between two Sunni districts in western Baghdad.

· Hospitals across Baghdad receive the bodies of 40 people, shot dead in other incidents. Four of those men have been shot in the head and hanged from pylons in Sadr City, wearing signs proclaiming that they are traitors.

· Muhsin Khudayyir, the editor of Alif Baa al-Iraq, a weekly newspaper, is gunned down in a street near his home in a Sunni part of Baghdad.

· Two US soldiers are killed in Anbar province.

Wednesday March 15

· A roadside bomb explodes near a girls' primary school near the town of Baquba, killing three pupils aged between 12 and 13 and injuring two others.

· A bomb misses a US patrol in Mosul but kills one civilian and wounds three others.

· A US airstrike near Balad kills 11 people, most of whom are women and children, including a six-month-old baby. The US says the target of the raid was a man suspected of helping foreign fighters in Iraq. Ahmed Khalaf, the brother of one of the victims, said: "The dead family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children. The Americans have promised us a better life, but we only get death."

· A suicide bomber riding a bicycle tries to strike a police patrol near Baquba but blows himself up prematurely, killing two civilians.

· A 24-year-old man dies while in custody at Abu Ghraib prison. US authorities say the man was found unconscious and that attempts to revive him failed.

· Iraqi police discover 27 bodies scattered across Baghdad late at night. The victims are all men, all have been executed, some with their hands bound together.

· A US soldier is killed south west of Baghdad by indirect fire.

Thursday March 16

· Four college students are shot dead by a gunman in Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad.

· A roadside bomb kills a driver on his way to collect pilgrims from the border with Iran.

· A convoy of cars which is normally used by the chief of staff of the Iraqi army is hit by a roadside bomb in the small northern town of Taza, 10km south of Kirkuk. Babakir Zebari was not in any of the vehicles but three others are injured.

· Hundreds of enraged Kurdish protesters destroy a memorial to Saddam Hussein's 1988 gas attack on the northern town of Halabja, setting fire to the museum on the 18th anniversary of the deaths of 5,000 people. One person is killed and eight are injured after Kurdish security forces open fire on the crowd.

· Three civilians are killed and and six are wounded after gunmen attack a checkpoint operated by US and Iraqi military personnel near the town of Ramadi, 180km north of Baghdad.

· Four bodies are found in different parts of Baghdad.

· A translator working for the American military is shot dead and four members of his family injured when gunmen attack their house in Baiji, 180km north of Baghdad.

· Iraq's parliament sits for the first time since its election three months ago, though talks on forming a national unity government are still in the grip of a deadlock.

· The US launches its largest air assault since the invasion of 2003. Operation Swarmer involves more than 50 aircraft, 1,500 Iraqi and US troops and 200 tactical vehicles, targeting suspected insurgents operating near Samarra. A statement says the operation is "expected to continue for several days as a thorough search of the objective area is conducted". Samarra was the scene of the attack on a Shia shrine last month which prompted sectarian reprisals and tit-for-tat killings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1733062,00.html