Updated at 7:25 p.m. EDT, Apr. 22, 2009
At least 10 Iraqis were killed and 30 more were wounded in the latest violence. A U.S. soldier was killed while on patrol in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the U.N. delivered a report on Kirkuk to the Iraqi government, while the U.S. Senate confirmed Christopher Hill to be the next ambassador.
The United Nations handed the Iraqi government a report on the city of Kirkuk that was a year in the making. Several options on how to handle ethnic tensions in the city are included, and an anonymous U.N. official said that Iraqi officials reacted positively to the report.
The Kurds consider Kirkuk to be their ancient capital, but under Saddam, they were run out of the city and replaced with Arabs. Turkmen and other smaller minorities also reside in the city. Kurds would like to see Kirkuk annexed by the Kurdish Autonomous Region; however, the large oil field underneath the city and Turkish relations make this unlikely. While a surge in U.S. troops for Kirkuk has kept violence down, in nearby Mosul, the tension and the violence continue as the Kurds initiated a boycott against the local council.
A teenaged suicide bomber walked into a Sunni mosque in Duluiya where he killed five people and wounded 15 others.
In Mosul, a bomb at a marketplace wounded eight people. Gunmen killed a dairy shop owner. A roadside bomb injured an Iraqi soldier.
In Baghdad, gunmen threw a grenade at a police commando checkpoint; one policeman was killed and three others were wounded.
Kurdish Peshmerga killed a suicide bomber approaching their checkpoint in Zummar; two Peshmerga and a civilian were injured as wel.l A car bomb targeting a Peshmerga commander exploded but left no casualties.
A judge was kidnapped in Kirkuk. A municipal employee was killed during a second kidnapping attempt.
Fifteen suspects were detained during ongoing operations in Basra that are likely the result of internecine struggles between Shi’ite political factions in the province than any attempt at increasing security.
Four missiles fell near Camp Echo in Diwaniya.
Nine suspects were detained in Fallujah.
In Dhi Qar, 29 suspects were detained.
The U.S. military hopes that training given to the last detainees in their custody will help them return to a peaceful life outside jail. The U.S. has detained approximately 100,000 Iraqis, but a U.S.-Iraq security pact signed last year forces the U.S. to either release the detainees or hand them over to Iraqi authorities. Many of the detainees were held for years without evidence.
