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Mortars slam into Baghdad neighborhoods
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-27 06:55
Violence killed at least 29 people Sunday, including three American soldiers,
and mortar fire rumbled through the heart of Baghdad after sundown despite
stringent security measures imposed after an explosion of sectarian violence.
A ban on driving in Baghdad and its suburbs helped prevent major attacks
during daylight Sunday, but after nightfall explosions thundered through the
city as mortar shells slammed into a Shiite quarter in southwestern Baghdad,
killing 16 people and wounding 53, police said.
A doctor treats an
injured boy at a hospital in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast
of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006.
[AP] | Mortar fire also hit a Shiite area on the
capital's east side, killing three people and injuring six, police reported.
Nevertheless, officials announced they would let vehicles back on the streets
at 6 a.m. Monday — in part because shops were running out of food and other
basics. Gasoline stations were closed, and people were unable to go to work
Sunday, a work day in this Muslim country.
The vehicle ban, which followed a curfew that kept everyone in the Baghdad
region inside for two days, was part of emergency measures imposed after
Wednesday's bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra triggered a wave of reprisal
attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics, pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Iraqi police said they had found no trace of abducted American journalist
Jill Carroll as the deadline set by her kidnappers for killing her passed at
midnight Sunday with no word on her fate.
The freelance journalist, who was doing work for the Christian Science
Monitor, was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad. She was last seen on a videotape
broadcast Feb. 10 by a Kuwaiti television station, which said the kidnappers
threatened to kill her unless the United States met unspecified demands by
Sunday.
An Interior Ministry official said Sunday that authorities had stepped up
their search for the 28-year-old woman but made no progress.
"Our forces raided some suspected places, but she was not there," Maj. Falah
al-Mohammedawi said. "We are watching the situation closely."
Although mosque attacks have declined sharply, sectarian violence went
unabated Sunday.
A bomb exploded at a Shiite mosque in the southern city of Basra, injuring at
least two people, police said.
More than 60 Shiite families fled their homes in predominantly Sunni areas
west and north of Baghdad after receiving threats, said Shiite legislator
Jalaladin al-Saghir and Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Jalil Khallaf.
North of the capital, gunmen stepped from a car and fired on teenagers
playing soccer in a Shiite-Sunni mixed neighborhood of Baqouba, killing two of
the youths and wounding five, police said.
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