Nov deadliest month for US troops in Iraq
Car bomb kills 7 while GI, 4 Iraqis killed in attacks, 40 drown in boat accident
AFP, Reuters, Baghdad
A US soldier and four Iraqi civilians died in a spate of attacks yesterday, capping one of the deadliest months since the war and setting a bloody backdrop for efforts to keep landmark polls on schedule. In Baiji, a car bomb exploded in a crowded market in a town north of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least seven people and wounding 20, underlining Iraq's severe security problems with elections just two months away. The bomb went off in a busy staging area in the oil-refining town of Baiji, 200km north of Baghdad, as a US military patrol was passing. The blast destroyed market stalls and caused panic among the throng of shoppers, witnesses said. A doctor at Baiji hospital, Samir Mehdi, said he had received seven dead civilians from the blast and 18 wounded, including a child. A US military spokesman said two US soldiers were also wounded. Meanwhile, up to 40 people were swept away and drowned as they tried to cross a swollen river in the far north of Iraq yesterday, families of the victims said. Dozens of people were packed onto a flat barge boat, trying to cross a tributary of the Tigris river, when a rush of water swept down the river and overturned the barge, witnesses told a reporter for Reuters at the scene. The accident occurred near the town of Zakhu, on Iraq's border with Turkey, about 300 miles north of Baghdad. In a separate attack in the town, an insurgent fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US tank, wounding a US soldier and damaging the tank, the spokesman said. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who has insisted that the US-led onslaught on the former rebel bastion of Fallujah had curbed violence, was expected to travel to Jordan to try to win support from exiled opposition leaders for the elections. As well as near daily attacks on Iraqi security forces and civilians, November has been one of the deadliest months for US troops, with 134 killed. The highest death toll was in April this year, when 135 soldiers and Marines were killed. The toll is one shy of the record of April 2004, when US forces were also facing insurgents on several fronts, including Fallujah. According to Pentagon figures, the latest death brought to 1,251 the total number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March last year.
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