Updated at 11:29 p.m EST, Nov. 19, 2006
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem arrived in Iraq to find that 182 Iraqis were killed or reported dead and 140 were wounded in separate incidents today. Prominent kidnapping attempts also continued, some successful. The U.S. military reported that one U.S. soldier had been killed in Baghdad. Also, U.S. forces killed several "suspected terrorists" in a pair of raids yesterday. Moallem is the highest-ranking Syrian official to visit the country since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The two neighboring countries have not had formal relations since 1982.
The U.S. military reported the death of an American soldier during a roadside bomb attack late yesterday in Baghdad. Also, Coalition forces killed eight gunmen in a raid in Ramadi and two others in an airstrike in Baghdad, both events occurred yesterday as well. Combined U.S. and Iraqi forces also killed another 12 militiamen and freed eight Iraqi hostages in Baquba and near Kirkuk.
In prominent kidnappings: Judge Mudhafar Al-Obeidi was kidnapped in west Baghdad, and men wearing camouflage kidnapped the Iraqi deputy health minister, Ammar al Saffar, in a separate event. In an eastern neighborhood, a kidnapping attempt on police Colonel Yasin Ibrahim ended in his death, the death of an accompanying policeman and the kidnapping of their driver. Also, a police captain, Falah Hassan, was wounded as he escaped an abduction attempt.
Several events took place in the capital. Police recovered 49 unidentified bodies late Saturday night and into Sunday; they were bound and bore the usual gunshot and torture wounds. At a bus station in Baghdad’s Al-Mashtel neighborhood, 15 were killed and 54 wounded when four car bombs blew up within a span of a few minutes. A roadside bomb in the Saidiya neighborhood wounded six people and one in an Eastern neighborhood killed two people and wounded three others. In the Zaitoun area, gunmen shot dead two people; minutes later, three policemen were killed and three wounded when bombs rattled the same neighborhood. Two more Iraqis were gunned down in the Oroba neighborhood and a policeman on foot patrol was shot dead in an unspecified location in the capital.
In Hilla, at least 22 were killed and 48 injured when a suicide car bomber posing as a contractor blew up his cargo amid a group of laborers looking for work.
Gunmen near Sadiya al Jabal shot at a minibus carrying farm workers; eight were killed and two wounded.
A booby-trapped doll blasted three children to their deaths and wounded another child in Hawija.
Kurdish artist, Masaud Koran, was assassinated in Mosul’s Jaza’er neighborhood. In another incident in Mosul, gunmen shot dead an Iraqi soldier. Gunmen also killed Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Ganim and his driver; he worked for the Facility Protection Services. And police recovered the body of an abducted 15-year-old girl.
Shortly after sunset in Kirkuk, three people were killed and 22 wounded when a suicide bomber attacked a funeral for a man shot dead late Saturday. At a separate gathering, gunmen shot dead two other people.
The U.S. military reported today that a suicide car bomber killed one police officer and wounded another at a police checkpoint in Haditha on Saturday.
Eleven unidentified bodies were brought to the hospital in Baqouba. Also, the U.S. military now reports that 43 people were killed in Baqouba during heavy fighting Saturday, up 25 from the reported 18 dead yesterday. Twenty-four police officers were among the dead.
And Iraqi forces said they killed a local al Qaeda leader and his son in an unspecified village 60 miles north of Iraq.
Compiled by Margaret Griffis
