Iraq Shaken by Barrage of Bombings

BAGHDAD —  Insurgents staged a bloody show of strength across Iraq on Friday, detonating at least 14 car bombs that killed at least 27 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounded dozens of Iraqis.

The onslaught included at least six bombings in the capital, largely targeting members of the Iraqi army and police forces. The attacks came a day after Iraqi lawmakers approved a Shiite- and Kurd-dominated Cabinet for the nation’s first freely elected government in half a century.

A man claiming to be Jordanian militant leader Abu Musab Zarqawi claimed responsibility for most of the bombings in a pair of Internet statements. The messages hailed the “lions” of Zarqawi’s group, which he now calls the Al Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers, for the attacks on Iraqi police and army units that left “filthy bodies filling the roads.”

The sheer number and coordination of the bombings seem certain to further unsettle an Iraqi population that has suffered through a two-week upswing in bloodshed and a political vacuum since the parliamentary election in January.

The attacks also appeared to send a clear message to the new government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari that the largely Sunni Muslim-backed insurgency planned to continue its campaign even though a Sunni was expected to be named defense minister.

A U.S. military statement acknowledged that insurgents “have still proven they can execute or surge their capability to conduct limited attacks,” but characterized the day’s violence as the latest in a series of “failing attempts to drive a wedge between the Iraqi people and their right to choose their own destiny.”

Military officials said two U.S. soldiers had been killed by a car bomb near a town they identified as Diraya. A third soldier died and two others were wounded by a “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device” near Taji, about 15 miles north of Baghdad, the military said. The names of the victims were not released pending notification of relatives.

Four suicide car bombers struck Iraqi soldiers and police in the largely Sunni Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya on Friday morning. The first blast struck a joint police and army patrol, leaving at least 18 dead. The other bombers targeted army security convoys and the headquarters of a police special forces unit.

One of the Internet statements said the suicide bombings had been preceded by a barrage of 15 mortar shells on police and army buildings in the area, designed to move the security forces into the path of the waiting car bombers.

The attacks set ablaze several buildings on one of Adhamiya’s main streets, as police and Iraqi army troops locked down the neighborhood.

One soldier on the scene, his face masked by a scarf, pleaded for the support of Iraqi citizens in the face of the continuing attacks.

“Wake up, people,” the soldier told Al Arabiya news channel. “We’re on the right side. We’re here to serve you.”

Guerrillas also struck in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Ghadeer. A suicide bomber targeted a joint U.S. and Iraqi security convoy before noon, wounding four Iraqi soldiers. Police sealed off the area, searching for other explosives, and focused their suspicions on a blue car parked nearby. The vehicle exploded as they approached, wounding another four officers and killing one civilian, according to an officer on the scene.

South of Baghdad in the turbulent town of Madaen, five car bombs exploded, at least three of them driven by suicide attackers who drove into a police patrol and a police commando base. The Iraqi Interior Ministry said today that five people had been killed in the attacks.

Another car bombing was reported in Baqubah, north of Baghdad.

Although most of Friday’s attacks targeted police and troops, insurgents also commonly attack Shiite Muslim neighborhoods, mosques and religious celebrations in an apparent attempt to spark a sectarian war.

On Friday, Baghdad’s Bratha Mosque, a prominent Shiite rallying site, had the atmosphere of a citadel under siege. Makeshift barriers closed off all surrounding streets, visitors were subjected to pat-downs, and armed guards patrolled the prayer hall.

“We are being killed and our mosques are being bombed,” said the imam, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir. “What can we say? We must unmask these terrorists.”

Meanwhile, leaders of Iraq’s Sunni minority, which long held sway over Iraq, complained of a campaign of persecution by officials installed after dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Abdel Salam Kubaisi of the hard-line Muslim Scholars Assn. said in an interview that Iraqi special forces had raided a number of Sunni mosques early Friday and detained several imams.

Police commandos also raided the association’s headquarters at Baghdad’s Umm Qura Mosque and, finding no clerics present, arrested the security chief there, Kubaisi said.

Another raid came to a violent end at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Baqubah, authorities said.

U.S. forces surrounded the mosque seeking to arrest the Imam Abdel Razaq Rasheed Dulaimy. According to local police, the prayer leader came outside carrying two grenades. He threw one at the soldiers, which didn’t explode, police said. U.S. forces then shot Dulaimy in the leg, police said, causing the second grenade to explode and kill him.

Elsewhere, authorities were exposing violence from the nation’s past near Samawah in southern Iraq. Iraqis and Americans have begun excavating a mass grave containing the bodies of more than 1,000 Kurds, mostly women and children who apparently were lined up and shot with AK-47s.

The site is thought to contain victims of the 1987-88 Anfal campaign, in which thousands of Kurdish families were forcibly relocated. Outgoing Minister of Human Rights Bakhtiar Amin, a Kurd, said that “4,500 to 5,000 villages were totally destroyed, half a million people perished, and 182,000 disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Preliminary excavation of more than 100 bodies shows that more than 60% were under the age of 18 and only five appear to have been adult males.

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Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed, Saif Rasheed, Suhail Ahmad and Raheem Salman and a special correspondent in Baqubah contributed to this report.