BAGHDAD, Iraq -Two car bombs exploded yesterday near the home of a community leader outside the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 20 people and injuring another 20, Iraqi hospital and police officials said.
The explosions occurred in Tal Afar, about 50 miles west of Mosul, said Khesro Goran, Mosul's deputy governor. They might have targeted Hassan Baktash, a Shiite with close ties to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Goran said. He also is a party member.
At least 20 people were killed, said Mosul's deputy police chief, Brig. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed, and the director of Tal Afar General Hospital, Saleh Qaddo Haider. At least 20 people were injured, Mohammed said.
Earlier, a car bomb exploded at a Baghdad restaurant popular with police, killing at least seven people and wounding at least 82, and militants assassinated a top national security official. Five U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs and a vehicle accident.
South of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb blew up outside a Shiite mosque shortly before evening prayers, killing at least 10 people and injuring another 30, authorities said. The explosion occurred at 8 p.m. in front of the Abul-Fadl Abbas mosque in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Lt. Odai al-Zayadi said.
Dawoud al-Tai, director of the Mahmoudiya general hospital, said 10 bodies and 30 wounded people were brought to his facility.
Iraqi soldier Alaa Abdul-Mohsen said the suicide bomber attempted to drive his explosives-packed car into the mosque, but a protective sand barrier kept him away. Instead, the car rammed into an adjacent house and detonated.
U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 300 suspected insurgents in the biggest sweep in the capital to date.
The car bomb in the busy Talibia neighborhood was detonated outside the Habayibna restaurant at a time when police officers usually meet there for lunch, said police Lt. Zaid Tarek.
All these people were killed for no reason. What wrong did they do by being policemen or soldiers? shaken restaurant owner Mshari Hassan said shortly after the blast.
Casualties were taken to three Baghdad hospitals. Al-Kindi hospital received three dead and 54 injured, according to its admission records.
Another three dead and 13 injured were taken to Al-Sadr hospital, director Rahim al-Majidi said. At least 10 more wounded were taken to Imam Ali hospital and five to the Medical City hospital.
The hospitals did not say whether the dead included soldiers or police officers.
Earlier, two carloads of gunmen killed Maj. Gen. Wael al-Rubaei, a top national security official, and his driver in Baghdad's latest drive-by shooting.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, the group run by Jordanian terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for killing al-Rubaei in a statement posted on an Internet site used by the group. The claim's authenticity could not be verified.
Al-Rubaei's killing came a day after another senior government official, Trade Ministry auditing office chief Ali Moussa, was killed as part of an ongoing terror campaign that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month.
Since April 27, insurgents have targeted government and military officials in a campaign of assassinations and kidnappings. There have been at least 28 such incidents, including 18 assassinations, six attempted assassinations, three kidnappings and assassinations, and one kidnapping, according to an Associated Press count.
The U.S. military said yesterday that three American soldiers were killed Sunday and one was injured in two separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Another two Task Force Liberty soldiers also were killed in separate incidents Sunday. The first was killed when his patrol was attacked with a car bomb just north of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The other was killed in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk.
As of yesterday, at least 1,634 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
A suicide bomber killed five people and injured 13 when he drove an explosives-packed pickup truck into a crowd outside a municipal council office in Tuz Khormato, 55 miles south of Kirkuk, said police commander Lt. Gen. Sarhat Qader.
Another two people were killed and two were injured in Kirkuk when a mortar round landed on a house, police Capt. Farhad Talabani said.
In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, three suicide bombers tried to attack an American military base, injuring three soldiers, the military said.
The joint offensive, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, appeared to be winding down yesterday. It involved seven Iraqi battalions backed by U.S. forces and was centered on western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district, targeting militants suspected of attacking the U.S. detention facility there and the road linking downtown to the international airport, the military said.
This is the largest combined operation with Iraqi security forces to date
said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Clifford Kent. The Iraqi Security Forces have the lead in this operation while we perform shaping and supporting roles.
Three Romanian journalists who had been held hostage in Iraq for nearly two months arrived home aboard a military plane yesterday, a day after their release.
TV reporter Marie Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci, and newspaper reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian were kidnapped in Baghdad on March 28 with their guide, American-Iraqi Mohammed Monaf. The four were freed Sunday.
Iraqi insurgents had demanded Romania withdraw its soldiers from Iraq. Bucharest rejected the demand. The three journalists were greeted yesterday by Romania's President Traian Basescu and hundreds of journalists and friends.
Iraqi security forces captured Ismail Budair Ibrahim al-Obeidi, a terrorist close to al-Zarqawi's network, in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, a government statement said.
The suspect, also known as Abu Omar, planned car bomb attacks in Baghdad and rigged booby-trapped cars for foreign fighters, the statement said.
Meanwhile, aides to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr sought to defuse tension between Sunnis and the majority Shiites after a recent series of sectarian killings. Sunnis are believed to make up the bulk of Iraq's deadly insurgency.
The senior aides met Sunday with the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, a key Sunni group, in a bid to soothe tensions that have flared and resulted in the deaths of 10 Shiite and Sunni clerics in the past two weeks.
The association's leader, Harith al-Dhari, last week pinned the killing of several Sunnis, including clerics, on the Badr Brigades, the military wing of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The militia denied the charge and accused the Sunni association of trying to start a civil war. 17
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