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Female suicide bomber kills 8 in Iraq
2008-01-16
A woman wearing a vest lined with explosives blew herself up near a popular market and Shiite mosque in turbulent Diyala province Wednesday, killing eight civilians -- the latest in a growing number of female suicide attacks. Seven people were wounded in the bombing in Khan Bani Saad, a town nine miles south of Baqouba, Diyala's provincial capital, police said. Involving women in fighting violates religious taboos in Iraq, and a growing number of female suicide attacks could indicate insurgents are becoming increasingly desperate. U.S.-led forces are increasingly catching militants suspected of training women to become human bombs or finding evidence of efforts by al-Qaida in Iraq to recruit women, according to military records. Because of Muslim cultural sensitivities, women can be good candidates for suicide attacks when there are no female security guards. Most Iraqis are conservative Muslims who believe physical contact is forbidden between women and men not related by blood or marriage. As a result, women are often allowed to pass through male-guarded checkpoints without being searched. In October, the U.S. Army trained 20 women to work as security guards in a Baghdad suburb after a female suicide bomber entered a nearby building without being searched. Wednesday's bombing was the fourth female suicide attack in Iraq in three months, and all have taken place in Diyala province. The province has defied the trend toward lower violence over the past six months in Baghdad and much of central Iraq. Insurgents who were pushed out of the western province of Anbar and out of Baghdad have shifted their operations into the farming region of palm and citrus groves, where Shiite and Sunni communities press up next to each other as if on a checkerboard. Diyala has been a major focus of a nationwide campaign the U.S. military launched last week against al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremists. Six U.S. soldiers were killed and four were wounded as they searched a booby-trapped house in Diyala just days into the military operation. At least 273 civilians were slain in Diyala last month, compared to at least 213 in June, according to an Associated Press count. Over the same span, monthly civilian deaths in Baghdad dropped from at least 838 to at least 182. But after several months of relative quiet in Baghdad, fighters believed allied with Iran have resumed mortar and rocket attacks, with several big blasts heard shortly after dawn on Wednesday as well as a few more later in the morning. On Tuesday night, at least five mortars crashed into the fortified Green Zone, site of the American Embassy and Iraqi government, not long after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a news conference after making an unannounced visit. Mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone, which had been a daily event, virtually stopped about mid-October. The quiet followed a six-month cease-fire announced by radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia in August, though some breakaway factions of al-Sadr's group continued to launch attacks. The resumption of the attacks coincided with a sharp rise in U.S. rhetoric against Iran by President Bush during his tour of the Middle East. Two Mahdi Army commanders have told The Associated Press the uptick in mortar and rocket attacks is not the work of their organization, which continues its cease-fire. Instead, they said the attacks are the work of a new organization with ties to Iran. The group, called Italat, which means "intelligence" in Farsi, was formerly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's liaison to the Mahdi Army and its rogue factions, the commanders said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to advertise their jobs to the U.S. military. Not all the attacks in Baghdad may be linked to Shiite extremists. About 10 a.m., two mortar rounds slammed into Palestine Street in east Baghdad. Three pedestrians were wounded, police said. The target was unclear, but the neighborhood is dominated by Shiites. But other types of attacks linked to Iran also appear to be on the rise. On Sunday, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that the overall flow of weaponry from Iran into Iraq appears to be down, but that attacks with "explosively formed projectiles" tied to Tehran are up by a factor of two or three in recent days. "Frankly, we are trying to determine why that might be," he said. The roadside bombs, known as EFPs, are armor-piercing explosives that have killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. U.S. military officials have said for months that mainly Shiite Iran has been supplying the devices to Shiite militias in Iraq. Tehran denies it. In other attacks Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded at 8 a.m. in the commercial Bab al-Muadham district of Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding four. The blast appeared to target a passing police car but instead hit a civilian car, a police officer said. About the same time, another roadside bomb went off southeast of Baghdad at an intersection where U.S. and Iraqi troops often pass, police said. The attack killed one civilian and wounded four others. In northern Iraq, police said a suicide bomber blew up his car in an attack against a U.S. convoy in the al-Maliya district east of the city of Mosul. The U.S. military said it was investigating the report. All police spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information.
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