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Explosions rock Baghdad for third consecutive day

A parked car bomb exploded in a bustling section of downtown Baghdad early yesterday, killing four people and wounding 15, police said, in the third consecutive day of morning rush hour blasts.

Also yesterday, unidentified gunmen in the volatile northern city of Mosul killed two sisters from a Christian family as they were waiting in front of their house for a ride to work, police said. The women’s mother was injured in the attack.

The blast in Baghdad occurred around 9:30am off al-Nasir Square in the heart of the city — a busy neighborhood of shops, pharmacies and photography stores. Police said that three officers were among the wounded.

In another attack early yesterday, a roadside bomb blew up around 10am in the Shiite-dominated Shaab neighborhood of north Baghdad, officials said. Seven people, including three policemen, were injured in that attack.

The attacks follow two days of rush hour blasts in Baghdad that have killed more than 30 people and wounded some 70 others.

A defense ministry spokesman said yesterday Iraqi and US forces have arrested the “No. 1 butcher” responsible for beheadings in the volatile Diyala Province.

“Iraqi forces received intelligence on a very dangerous terrorist known as the No. 1 butcher who was responsible for a beheading squad that slaughtered innocent people,” Major-General Mohammed al-Askari said.

The suspect, Riyad Wahab Hassan Falih, “also supervised the training of terrorists specializing in beheading Iraqis,” he added in a statement.

The arrest came amid a series of operations across the province in which Iraqi army troops apprehended 65 people in 72 hours.

In an operation early yesterday, troops arrested nine local al-Qaeda leaders who had been hiding in an underground bunker.

Meanwhile, the US military in Iraq is abandoning — deliberately and with little public notice — a centerpiece of the widely acclaimed strategy it adopted nearly two years ago to turn the tide against the insurgency. It is moving US troops farther from the people they are trying to protect.

Starting early last year, the troops were pushed into the cities and villages as part of a change in strategy that included US President George W. Bush’s decision to send more combat forces.

The bigger US presence on the streets was credited by many with allowing the Americans and their Iraqi security partners to build trust among the populace, thus undermining the extremists’ tactics of intimidation, reducing levels of violence and giving new hope to resolving the country’s underlying political conflicts.

Now the Americans are reversing direction, consolidating in larger bases outside the cities and leaving security in the hands of the Iraqis while remaining within reach to respond as the Iraqi forces require. The US hopes to complete its shift out of all Iraqi cities by June next year.
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