Two men in an oil tanker truck, an Iraqi soldier, a shop keeper and a government employee became the latest victims of attacks by insurgents yesterday, one day after militants killed more than two dozen people with a car bomb in a Shiite farming village.
The surge in violence occurred as Iraqi political blocs unveiled their lists of candidates for Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, which the US and its coalition partners hope will help restore enough stability that they can begin sending home their forces next year.
In yesterday's worst attack, a roadside bomb destroyed one of several oil tanker trucks driving on a main road in south Baghdad, sending a fire ball up over the area and killing the two men inside, said police Captain Ibrahim Abdul-Ridha. Four civilian passers-by were wounded.
Shootings
Drive-by shootings in Baghdad also killed an Iraqi soldier who was standing in front of his home, seriously wounded a shopkeeper in the Dora district, and hit a vehicle carrying Cabinet adviser Ghalib Abdul Mahdi to work, wounding him and killing his driver, police said.
A new report by the US Pentagon estimated that that 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1 last year. In the most recent period, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 16, an estimated 64 Iraqis became casualties each day, the report indicated.
A recent Associated Press count found that at least 3,870 Iraqis have died in the last six months. A US military spokesman said last week that as many as 30,000 Iraqis may have died during the war, which began with the US invasion in March 2003.
The AP count found that two-thirds of those killed were civilians and one-third were security personnel.
At least 2,015 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count, including three army soldiers who were killed on Saturday by a land mine and a roadside bomb in two separate attacks.
26 dead in truck blast
On Saturday, a bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates exploded in the center of the Shiite farming village of Huweder, about 72km northeast of Baghdad, killing 26 people and injuring at least 34.
The bomb exploded as villagers were heading to the mosque for prayers or outdoors in the cool evening breeze to break the daylong fast they observe during the holy month of Ramadan.
"It felt as if the earth was shaking underneath our feet," said Hussein Mouwaffaq, whose brother Qahtan was killed in the blast. "The street was strewn with dates. Many people were killed and injured."
Police Lieutenant Ahmed Abdul Wahab, who gave the casualty figure, said the number of deaths could increase because several survivors were critically wounded. The village is in a religiously mixed area plagued by suicide attacks, roadside bombs and armed assaults on police checkpoints.
Shiite civilians are frequent targets of Sunni extremists, including Iraq's most feared terror group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which considers members of the majority religious community to be heretics and collaborators with US-led forces. Iraq's security services are staffed mainly by Shiites and Kurds.
At the hospital in nearby Baqouba, seriously wounded victims lay on stretchers on a blood-smeared floor as doctors and nurses in bloodstained white coats scurried about, trying to cope.
On one bed a child lay motionless with a bandage covering his knee, as a man sobbed next to him. A badly burned man writhed in agony on a stretcher as blood ran down his burned skin.
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