Car bombs and shootings claimed at least 27 lives in Iraq on Thursday and gunmen wounded a pro-US Shia mayor, as Britain's Tony Blair asserted the country is not in the grip of civil war. Eight people died and 25 were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a joint Iraqi military and police checkpoint in central Baghdad's Kharmana Square, security officials said.
A soldier and a civilian died when another checkpoint was attacked by a suicide car bomber in Baghdad's south-western Yarmuk district, the officials said. In another attack, five workers were killed and two dozen hurt when a bomb on a bus exploded at the entrance to a factory in Iskandiriyah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Baghdad, as employees arrived for work.
Seven people were also reported killed around the restive city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, five of them shot dead by gunmen who attacked a string of gas stations and set them on fire, police said. Iraqi security officials said the mayor of Baghdad's Shia bastion Sadr City, Rakim al-Darraji, was ambushed in the district by gunmen.
He was wounded but a policeman travelling with him was killed. Darraji had helped the US military in setting up a security centre in the district as part of the crackdown in Baghdad to rein in the violence.
"Right now, we're working in Sadr City, working closely with the mayor, and its been completely permissive and there's been no push back, if you will," by the Mahdi Army," said US General Joseph Fil before news broke of the ambush. Sadr City is the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a Shia militia which is accused of spearheading Iraq's sectarian bloodshed. Elsewhere four more people died in attacks.
The US military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of another five US troops on Wednesday. Three of the five were killed in blasts and battles in central Iraq's Diyala province of which Baquba is the capital, where reinforcements were sent this week as part of a US troop "surge". The latest deaths brought to 3,205 the US military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
In Washington, Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi told US President George W Bush on Thursday that the Baghdad crackdown is doing "better than expected" but will not by itself end Iraq's sectarian strife. "We are working hard together. Our security plan is marking some points. We are not finished, but we are doing better than expected in this plan," Mahdi told Bush as they met in the Oval Office.
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