US forces accidentally shoot young girl in Kut

Iraq: Child killed by US fire as clashes continue in Kut

US forces in Iraq American troops "accidentally" shot and killed a child on Wednesday in Iraq's Diyala province, the U.S. army said on Thursday. The Americans said soldiers were operating in an area where roadside bombs had been found recently in Diyala.

The soldiers fired a warning shot into a sand berm after they found a "suspicious woman who appeared to be signalling to someone". According to Reuters, the military said a young girl was found on the other side of the berm suffering from a gunshot wound. Soldiers She died on the way to a military hospital.

Diyala has become one of the deadliest provinces in Iraq for U.S. troops. It is home to about 1.4 million people and is mostly a mix of Sunni and Shiites.

The capital, Baquba, is about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. And it was near there that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed by U.S. forces last June.

Description of the area

And former Army Captain Phillip Carter, he was an operations officer for a task force that advised Iraqi police in Baquba from October 2005 to September 2006.

Phillip Carter, to you first. You spent a year there. Describe Diyala province to us. What does it look like? Who are the people who live there?

FORMER CAPT. PHILLIP CARTER, U.S. Army: Judy, we thought of Diyala as Little Iraq. It's a microcosm of the country, which has a mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in the north and the east.

The geography of the province is diverse. It stretches from the fertile farmlands outside of Baghdad to the deserts along the Iranian border all the way up into mountains in Kurdistan.

And it is a volatile province. It has a little bit of the problems of Baghdad. It touches on the Sunni triangle. And it also has many of the lines of communication leading from Iran into Baghdad, and so it is home to a number of the intrigues that involve Iran and Kurdistan, as well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fred Kagan, what would you add to that? How is it different, Diyala, from the rest of Iraq?

FREDERICK KAGAN, American Enterprise Institute: Well, the mix that you have there, I think the captain is absolutely right. It is a Little Iraq. And you have Kurdish infiltration in the north. You have a majority Sunni province. You also have provincial government and security forces that are dominated by Shia, because the Sunnis sat out the local elections. And so you have some tensions there.

And because we have had relatively few forces in Diyala throughout 2006, there's a significant al-Qaida presence in Diyala, which has been causing a lot of problems. And then you've had a flow into Diyala of Sunnis who were displaced in Baghdad over the course of 2006, as well. So it's a very, very rough area, probably one of the toughest in Iraq right now.

Al Qaeda Holds “Kill A Cop Day” In Iraq Updated

September 25th, 2007 Posted By Pat Dollard.

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A member of the Special Police Commandos gestures near a burnt vehicle after this morning’s suicide car bomb attack on police in Basra

Suicide bombers target cops in Basra, Fallujah, and Mosul, all in one day. Update: Fourth attack reported in Kut.

1. A suicide car bomber struck the police headquarters in Basra on Tuesday, killing at least three officers and wounding 20 people amid fears over the southern city’s deteriorating security situation.

Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, had been relatively peaceful for much of the war but has seen tensions rise as Shiite militias battle for control of the oil-rich area.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, Basra’s police chief, said one of the suicide bomber’s legs had been found tied to the steering wheel, and he blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack.

“It seems that al-Qaida wants to make use of the fragile situation in the city caused by the tension among the parties and the city’s officials,” he said. “We cannot say that there is a security vacuum, but the security measures are less strong in the day than the night. After this attack, we will increase the police patrols in the day.”

Security concerns also rose after the British military last month pulled back its troops out of the city to a nearby airport to allow Iraqi security forces to take over—a move being closely watched by the U.S. military as it anticipates the eventual withdrawal of American forces in other areas of Iraq.



2. Mosul, Sept 25, (VOI)- Ninewa local police on Tuesday said a police chief was wounded as a suicide bomber blew himself up near him in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
“Chief of Abo Tamam police station, Lt. Colonel Abd Tobiyah, sustained injuries, today afternoon, when a suicide attacker detonated an explosives belt near him,” Brigadier Abdul Karim al-Juburi, head of Ninewa police operations room, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The source added “Tobiyah was supervising cars queuing in front of a petrol station in northern Mosul when the blast occurred.”

“The attack also left nine persons, including a judge, wounded,” said the source declining to name the wounded judge.

Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province, is 405 km north of Baghdad.

3. Falluja, Sept 25, (VOI)- A policeman was killed on Tuesday when a bomb exploded in the western Iraqi city of Falluja, a police source said.

“A roadside bomb detonated, today shortly before noon, near a police vehicle patrol in southern Falluja, killing a policeman,” the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The source added “the blast also damaged a police vehicle.”

Falluja is 45 km west of Baghdad.

4.Kut, Sept 25, (VOI)- Suspected Al Qaeda gunmen blew up a policeman’s house in al-Kut al-Gharbiya district, while police forces discovered an unknown body in southern Kut, a police source said on Tuesday.

“Unknown armed men blew up a policeman’s house in Dour al-Shoaoon region in al-Kut al-Gharbiya district using high-explosive materials,” the source, who refused to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

“The house was empty, but the blast injured one passing by and damaged three houses,” he also said.

“The police opened investigation into the incident,” the source noted.

Meanwhile, the same source said that “police patrols found an unidentified body south of Kut and sent it to the forensic medicine department.”

“The body belongs to a man wearing civilian clothes and bore signs of gunshot wounds to different parts of the body,” the source added.

Kut, capital city of Wassit province, lies 180 km southeast Baghdad.

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Associated Press writers Katarina Kratovac and Hamid Ahmed in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.