19 Killed As Clashes And Car Bombs Rock Baghdad

by Amer Ouali
BAGHDAD, Sept 12 (AFP) - At least 19 people were killed Sunday as US troops battled insurgents who fired a salvo of mortars into Iraq's government compound and orchestrated a string of car bombings in which two security officials died.
Meanwhile, an Islamist group threatened to kill two Italian women hostages, telling Rome it had 24 hours to pull its troops out of Iraq, according to a statement posted on an Islamic website.
Militants loyal to alleged Al-Qaeda operative and Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily-fortified Green Zone housing the government and the US embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The battles raged hours after US-led troops across the country commemorated the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, blamed on Al-Qaeda, which led to the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
At least 13 people were killed, including two children, and 55 wounded during intense fighting around Haifa Street, considered a bastion of Saddam Hussein loyalists, said the health ministry. Women and children were among the injured.
Mazen al-Tomaisi, a Palestinian working for Saudi and Al-Arabiya television died as he was reporting live from Baghdad and two photographers wounded in a US helicopter attack during the clashes, media sources said.
The fighting erupted after four US soldiers were wounded when a suspected car bomb struck a US tank before dawn in Haifa Street where insurgents and US troops clash regularly, a military source said.
Heavy machine-gun and assault rifle fire reverberated across the street for three hours and a tank was mobilised to support US troops, home to an urban war terrain of high-rise apartment buildings, perfect for snipers.
Witnesses saw an angry mob pelt the burning tank with stones and dance around the armoured vehicle as one man climbed on top, waving a black flag emblazoned with the name of Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, while veiled women ululated.
A pair of US helicopters then swooped down over the neighborhood and fired missiles and heavy machine-gun fire into the mob, killing at least five people.
The US military said the tank was destroyed from the air "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people".
Simultaneously, two drivers were shot dead trying to ram cars rigged with explosives into the high-security Green Zone, the seat of the interim government and US embassy, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqi and US sources said.
In a series of raids unconnected to the Haifa Street fighting, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said 16 of 21 wanted suspects were arrested by security forces raids in the capital.
"They were all Iraqis, all of them. They are Sunnis. This is a war, so we have to get them," he said. In one of the raids a car bomb exploded, he said, killing an Iraqi police colonel. A police lieutenant also died in the attack.
Another person was killed and 13 others wounded, six of them national guardsmen, when a suicide bomber blew up his car near a mosque in western Baghdad, said a doctor.
US Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan said that from late Saturday to early Sunday, over a dozen mortars and rockets had been fired into or around the Green Zone, frequently shelled by insurgents.
The internet statement signed by "the military branch of the Tawhid wal Jihad" said dozens of "mujahedeen missiles" were launched against scattered targets, particularly in Baghdad and other Sunni provinces.
"They targeted the American headquarters and the traitor Iraqi government and some embassies of allied countries," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
Zarqawi, a fugitive Jordanian Islamist who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head, has already claimed responsibility for a string of attacks in Iraq, including the beheading of foreign hostages.
The country's kidnapping crisis grinded on as an Islamist group claiming to hold two Italian women gave Rome another 24 hours to withdraw its troops from the war-torn country or the pair would be executed, on the internet.
"If we don't see the Italian troops withdraw from the land of Iraq, we will implement Allah's judgement on them, which will be slaughter," said the Islamic Jihad Organisation in Iraq.
Meanwhile, US Middle East pointman William Burns said Washington and Damascus are working to secure Syria's porous border with Iraq with the aim of stopping alleged militants crossing into the country.