Car bomb kills 10 as Ramadan starts

From combined dispatches

BAGHDAD — U.S. jets struck targets in the insurgent bastion Fallujah again yesterday, and U.S. officials said 10 persons — including a family of four — were killed when a car bomb exploded near a Baghdad police station in a bloody start to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

American and Iraqi officials fear a repeat of the surge in attacks that ushered in Ramadan last year. Iraqi Sunni Muslims and many Shi’ites began Ramadan yesterday; other Iraqi Shi’ites start fasting today.

U.S. jets and artillery pounded targets in the southern and eastern part of Fallujah — the major stronghold of Sunni insurgents — around sundown yesterday as residents were taking the traditional meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan.

One resident, Salah Abd, said American troops had sealed off major roads out of the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, preventing residents from leaving.

There were no reports of casualties from the evening raids. Dr. Rafia Hiyad of the Fallujah General Hospital said three persons were killed and seven others injured during attacks the previous night.

In southwest Baghdad, a car packed with 300 pounds of explosives blew up yesterday near a police station. The U.S. military said 10 civilians were killed, including a family of four who were driving by at the time of the blast. Iraqi hospital officials said 14 persons were wounded.

“This is an act of terrorists,” said Lt. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division. “These attacks kill innocent Iraqi people trying to live their lives in peace.”

U.S. officials indicated the bombing of Fallujah was not a prelude to a major offensive into the city that officials have said they might start sometime this fall.

The attacks began Thursday after peace talks between the Iraqi officials and city leaders broke down over the government’s demand that they hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken responsibility for suicide bombings and beheading foreign hostages.

U.S. troops detained Fallujah’s top negotiator in the talks, witnesses said.

Khaled al-Jumeili, an Islamic cleric, was arrested as he left a mosque after Friday prayers in a village about 10 miles south of Fallujah, they said. There was no confirmation from U.S. authorities.

Fallujah fell under control of radical clerics and their armed mujahideen fighters after the Marines lifted their three-week siege of the city in April.

In a statement read yesterday in Sunni mosques in Baghdad and elsewhere, Fallujah clerics threatened a civil-disobedience campaign across the country if the Americans try to overrun the city.

Some Iraqis elsewhere in the country said an offensive is the best thing that could happen to Fallujah, a town that has become synonymous with Iraq’s insurgency over the past 18 months.

“[Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi must attack Fallujah in whatever way necessary because they are the main reason for instability in Iraq,” said Iman Jadoa, 40, a clerk from the southern Shi’ite city of Basra.

“They must be made to pay,” she said.

Others questioned why no suicide car bombs ever hit Fallujah, and said the city needed to be taught a lesson if Iraq was to be peaceful for the election.

“Why are there no bombings in Fallujah? It’s because a mosquito doesn’t sting itself,” said Samkoo Mohammed-Ali, a university student in the peaceful Kurdish city of Suleimaniya.

Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group took responsibility for Thursday’s twin bombings inside Baghdad’s heavily guarded green zone — home to U.S. officials and the Iraqi leadership — which killed six persons, including three American civilians, and wounded 27 others, mostly Iraqis. A fourth American was missing and presumed dead.

Shi’ite militiamen, meanwhile, continued to turn in weapons to police in Baghdad’s Sadr City district under a five-day cash-for-weapons campaign. The head of the drive said it had been extended for two days because of the overwhelming response.

The deal with followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was intended to halt weeks of fighting with U.S. forces in the sprawling slums in northeastern Baghdad.