happy anniversary
Iraq anniversary marked by more fighting
From staff and wire reports
BAGHDAD — The start of the third year of U.S. military operations in Iraq is being marked by continuing violence by insurgents, with a new round of attacks Monday leaving Iraqi civilians and soldiers dead.
An Iraqi police commando stands guard Monday over Jordan's embassy in Baghdad.
By Karim Kadim, AP
Insurgent attacks across Iraq on Monday left seven civilians and three Iraqi soldiers dead. In the deadliest attack Monday on civilians, a roadside bomb killed four women and three children in Aziziyah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad, police Capt. Falah al-Muhmadawi said.
An Iraqi soldier was killed in Sherqat, 160 miles north of Baghdad, when a mortar shell landed on his camp, while another soldier died and four others were wounded when an Iraqi army vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in western Baghdad, a Defense Ministry official said.
In Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood, gunmen in two speeding cars fired on an Iraq army foot patrol, killing another soldier and wounding a third, police Capt. Talib Thamir said.
Nearby, the head of the Kazimiyah neighborhood police force, Col. Mou'yad Farhan, escaped unhurt when gunmen opened fire on his car, police said. His driver, however, was seriously injured and hospitalized.
In Samarra, an explosives-laden pickup truck driven by a suicide bomber went off prematurely near a hospital, wounding about a dozen civilians and damaging homes, police 1st Lt. Qassem Mohammed said.
Sunday, in one of the largest battles since the elections Jan. 30, insurgents attacked coalition forces Sunday southeast of Baghdad. The resulting clashes left 26 insurgents dead and six American soldiers wounded, U.S. Central Command said. Seven insurgents also were wounded in the fighting, Central Command said in a statement. A U.S. convoy was traveling through the Salman Pak area when it was attacked.
After the attack, troops recovered six rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 16 rockets, 13 machine guns, 22 assault weapons, more than 2,900 rounds of ammunition and 40 hand grenades from the insurgents.
The six soldiers were treated at a coalition medical facility, Central Command said.
Elsewhere on Sunday:
• A U.S. soldier was killed Sunday and two were injured near the insurgent stronghold of Tikrit.
• In Mosul, a senior police officer in charge of a local anti-corruption commission was killed when a suicide bomber detonated inside a government compound. The attack injured three other Iraqis.
• In Samarra, insurgents killed an Iraqi policeman as he walked to work, and then attacked policemen who went to recover his body. Three assailants were arrested, police Lt. Qassim Mohammed said.
• In the southern city of Basra, attackers targeted a police patrol with a roadside bomb. They killed one civilian and injured a policeman, police Col. Karim al-Zeidi said.
• In Baghdad, U.S. forces arrested eight terrorism suspects. Three had Iraqi police badges, but only one of those badges was registered in police records, according to the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
U.S. soldiers acting on a tip raided a house in Baghdad on Sunday and arrested a foreign terrorism suspect who had several passports, a pistol and $200, the Army said. The suspect was not identified.
Also Sunday, neighbors Iraq and Jordan announced they were temporarily recalling their top diplomats from each other's capitals in a growing dispute over Shiite Muslim claims that Jordan was failing to block terrorists from entering Iraq.
The diplomatic dispute erupted as a Jordanian court sentenced Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to a 15-year prison term in absentia. Zarqawi's whereabouts are unknown. His group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing that killed the anti-corruption official in Mosul.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said an investigation into the death of an Italian intelligence officer shot by U.S. forces in Iraq will be completed soon.
"It will not take forever," he told Fox News Sunday.
On March 4, U.S. forces shot at a car carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, a hostage who had been released by her Iraqi captors. Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence agent who engineered the release, was killed. Sgrena and another Italian intelligence agent were injured.