Would-be bomber shot in Iraq

Published Tuesday, June 5, 2007

BAGHDAD (AP) - Alert guards gunned down a black-clad woman at a police recruiting station today, a would-be suicide bomber who then exploded before their eyes. But another bomber succeeded, detonating an explosives-laden car at a checkpoint in Ramadi and killing six policemen.

The U.S. commander here acknowledged sectarian violence was on the rise.

Meanwhile, the U.S. command insisted it would continue the search for two abducted U.S. soldiers despite the release of a video yesterday by insurgents linked to al-Qaida claiming they had killed the two, along with a third missing soldier whose body was previously found.

The command’s attitude was reflected in the field.

"It really doesn’t change a thing," said Capt. Aaron Bright, a 10th Mountain Division company commander whose men have spent many days on the search since the soldiers were seized in an ambush on May 12 south of Baghdad. Four other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi were killed in that attack.

"We’re still going to continue our search, and we’re never going to stop until they’re found. We’ll continue to assume they’re alive," Bright said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The insurgent video displayed the two missing soldiers’ identification cards. "The Americans sent 4,000 soldiers looking for them," an unidentified voice said. "They were alive and then dead." It offered no proof.

Among the attacks today, gunmen assassinated a local leader of Muqtada al-Sadr’s radical Shiite Muslim faction south of Baghdad, and to the north, insurgents ambushed an Iraqi army vehicle, killing an undetermined number of soldiers.

As the sun rose, reports also began filtering in of headless corpses and other bodies found dumped around Iraq, many presumed victims of the relentless Shiite-against-Sunni bloodshed.

In an interview with CBS television, Gen. David Petraeus, overall U.S. commander in Iraq, noted that the number of sectarian killings had fallen off after the "surge" of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops began in February, an effort to restore order in Baghdad and nearby areas. But the number rose in May, he acknowledged.

"What all of the commanders on the ground have said repeatedly is that this is going to get harder before it gets easier," he said in the interview yesterday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said today that civilian casualties were down 34 percent in May, compared with April, although he refused to provide figures.

Figures compiled by The Associated Press showed that at least 2,155 Iraqis were killed last month, making it the third-deadliest month for Iraqis since the AP began tracking civilian casualties in April 2005.