Another bad day in Iraq

We have noted before that the world-shaking London attacks took a toll equivalent to the average bad day in Iraq. Well, Iraq is having another bad day. From Reuters:

Suicide bomber truck kills 55 in Iraq
Sat. July 16

BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber in a fuel truck killed 55 people in a town south of Baghdad on Sunday, the latest in a series of spectacular guerrilla attacks to rattle Iraq.

The bomb, which police said exploded near a Shi’ite mosque and market, also wounded 82 people. It followed several attacks which killed at least 16 people, including three British soldiers, on Saturday.

The frenzy of suicide attacks suggests the government still has a long way to go before stamping out such attacks, which officials say is the biggest security threat to Iraq.

A suicide bomber in a car hit the Doura district in south Baghdad, killing three civilians and two policemen, a police source said.

Violence also erupted near the northern city of Mosul. A suicide bomber strapped with explosives attacked a police station, killing four policemen, police said.

Ten militants blew themselves up across Baghdad on Friday and another attacked Iskindiriya, south of the capital, killing at least 32 people, police said.

In Amara in southeast Iraq, three British soldiers died in what the Ministry of Defense in London said was a suspected roadside bomb. It said the deaths brought to 92 the number of British soldiers who have died in Iraq, including 53 killed in action.

A little-known Iraqi insurgent group said in a Web statement that it was behind the killing of the British soldiers in southern Iraq on Saturday.

“Thank God, this morning … three British soldiers were killed and at least three others were injured by exploding a package by their patrol in the Maysan province,” the group, calling itself the Imam Hussein Brigades, said.

The statement was posted on a site used by the main Iraqi insurgent groups, including the al Qaeda group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The name suggested it was a Shi’ite group.

The group said it also killed an Iraqi judge in the town of Nassiriya.

See our last post on Iraq.

  1. Update
    The death toll is up to 98 from the fuel-truck bomb in Musayyib as of Sunday night. 15 suicide bombers have struck in Iraq within the last 48 hours. (Reuters, July 17)